I look at two examples by the African political scientist Ali Mazrui.
His comparison of the influences of African traditions, Islamic thoughts and
Western practices on contemporary sport in Africa is extremely insightful, while his comparison of boxer Muhammad Ali and former Ugandan president Idi Amin offers only limited perspectives on black masculinity.
Even fewer sport historians have used systematic comparison as a method to establish causal explanations. (I examine this latter form of comparison in Chapter 8 as part of the causation paradigm.)