Dances With Wolverines

It’s tempting, particularly as the activist movement has won a foothold within so many sports and at no benefit to their enjoyability, to insist that college football exists on a separate plane from the real world, that every-day concerns and issues of politics and sociology need not feature in discussions of the sport. Not so, according to Slate writer Ben Mathis-Lilley. In The Hot Seat, a collection of his reflections on football and fandom as he followed the University of Michigan Wolverines through their 2021 season, Mathis-Lilley tackles all the questions you’ve probably never wondered about college football: What would Karl Marx have to say about the misery fans feel at sitting through nonstop commercials during TV broadcasts? What’s the historical basis for the proclivity of Southern schools like Alabama and Georgia building their football rosters through massive under-the-table payments to high school recruits?