On Boston Common stands a monument dedicated to the Oneida Football Club. It honors the site where, in the 1860s, 16 boys played what was then called the “Boston game”—an early version of football in the United States. In the 1920s, a handful of them donated artifacts to museums, deposited self-penned histories into libraries and archives, and erected memorials, all to elevate themselves as the inventors of American football. But was this origin story as straightforward as they made it seem? In the new book Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024) Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin investigate the history of the Oneida Football Club. In a compelling narrative informed by sports history, Boston history, and the study of memory, the authors posit that these men engaged in self-memorialization to reinforce their elite cultural status during a period of tremendous social and economic change, and particularly increased immigration. An internationally renowned historian, Cronin is the academic director of Boston College Ireland. His publications include Places We Play: Ireland’s Sporting Heritage; A History of Ireland; and The Routledge Handbook of Irish Studies. Update: Read an interview with Cronin via BC News.