Communities of Cornhuskers: The Generation of Place Through Sports Fans' Rituals

Abstract

This article explores communication at University of Nebraska Cornhusker football “watch parties”—public gatherings where fans watch the football team's game on television—at seven locations across the United States. This study concludes that the decoration of the watch-party site, the attire worn by fans attending the watch parties, and collective activities of relating and connecting that occur during the watch parties constitute a unique type of performance ritual. Specifically, this article analyzes how the watch-party rituals spin a web of communal connections in which fans at each site connect with one another, with fans at other sites, and with the state of Nebraska to form what is called an “intermediate place”—a place that is symbolically rooted in a specific geographic location and simultaneously manifest in other physical locations.