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?

The Hot Seat takes no shame in preoccupying itself with subjects one rarely thinks about when it comes to college football, like the country’s demographic and economic changes, class resentment between fan bases, and why fans watch with such devotion in the first place when the sport so often brings them misery. While the book can feel disjointed at times as it ricochets from discussions of history to play-by-play accounts of Michigan Wolverines games, Mathis-Lilley makes a convincing case through his broad connect-the-dots inquiry that one can track the transformation of this country with that of college football, and that allegiance to a college football team plays a similar role in one’s identity as allegiance to a flag or political party.

As a Michigan fan myself, I can attest that Mathis-Lilley, who’s supported the team since growing up in Midland, Mich., is spot-on in diagnosing the anxiety and disillusionment essential to our fanbase. No one else expects more from their team—in the form of national championships, big rivalry wins, etc.—while receiving as much humiliation instead. The story of Michigan football, a team with a long and proud history dating back to the 1870s, in the last 20 years has been characterized by an abysmal record against rivals, embarrassing losses to inferior teams, and near-victories squandered through flukes, poor reffing, and collapse in the fourth quarter.

If Mathis-Lilley set out to give light to that mentality in writing this book, he chose the perfect season to cover. The Wolverines heading into 2021 were coming off one of