According to your textbook, how and why has American football become important to many Pacific Islanders?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

American college football teams increasingly recruit Pacific islanders on scholarship. In fact, rare is a top-ranked college team that doesn't feature at least one player from Oceania. American Samoans make up the majority because they are American citizens and need no visas, although football players from Tonga and Fiji are also recruited because of similar Polynesian cultural and physical traits. Although a genetic heritage of large, strong males is important, coaches say that adding to the attraction is a Polynesian culture that emphasizes group activity and bonding, coupled with a strong work ethic. Some pundits add that a long history of tribal warfare doesn't hurt. Others say that the Polynesian tradition of male group dancing assures that even the largest men still have a remarkable agility that helps them on the football field. Most sports historians credit Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah as the first college to recruit Pacific islanders, back in the late 1950s, drawing on its ties to the Mormon Church and its strong missionary presence in Oceania. But once BYU started the process, the floodgates opened, with other western teams–most notably, Washington State University, the University of Washington, UCLA, and the University of Arizona–filling their rosters with Pacific islanders.