Dr. Crawford, with the help of HPJ and the Getty College of Arts and Sciences, recently traveled to France to do research on American football in that country.
Americans have been playing football there since 1918, but the sport never really took off for French players until the 1980s, when a physical education teacher named Laurent Plagelatte brought the game back with him from a conference in Vail, CO. Today, the Federation Francaise de Football Americain has around 200 teams and over 20,000 players in various divisions.
The photo above is Crawford with the Red Star team of Noisy-le-sec, the team of Jean-Marc Burtscher (blue uniform #93 in the photo), who initially interested Crawford in American football in France, and who worked overtime to make his trip a success. Burtscher brought Crawford to games and practices, where Crawford tried his hand at bi-lingual coaching, and helped find research material and set up interviews with FFFA officials and former players.
Crawford plans to try to publish a book, with help on the photos by Burtscher, on this fascinating story and has already presented a paper on the subject in Green Bay, WI.
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