The Hot Seat: A Year of Outrage, Pride, and Occasional Games of College Football [Hardcover]

A fan’s search for the truth about American history, human nature, and whether Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh will keep his job
 
Being a University of Michigan football fan should be joyful. Michigan is an elite academic institution whose football team boasts forty-three Big Ten championships.
 
But these days, college football is complicated. The NCAA is corrupt and exploitative, and Michigan keeps losing to Ohio State. It’s hard not to wonder, asSlatewriter and superfan Ben Mathis-Lilley does in this book: Why are we doing this?
 
The Hot Seatis a chronicle of one of the wildest years in Michigan football history, but also a search for the truth about fandom, from the pages of history books to the wilderness of online forums. Is it embarrassing to care about what happens in a game? Why is Jim Harbaugh like that? Is it somehow Thomas Jefferson’s fault? This book explores all these questions and many more.
 
Against the backdrop of a quickly changing sport and country,The Hot Seatis an exploration of the all-consuming culture of fandom, and why it matters.

Ben Mathis-Lilleyis a senior writer for Slate.com, where he writes blog posts, columns, and feature stories about news, politics, and sports. He worked previously atNew Yorkmagazine and, briefly but gloriously, as the editor of BuzzFeed’s sports section. He lives in New Jersey.

Ben Mathis-Lilley’s thrilling account of one very magical college football season puts you on the sidelines, in the trenches, and inside the coaches’ heads to tell a bigger story about what it really takes to win—in sport and in life, too.Jonathan Cohn, senior correspondent at HuffPost and author of The Ten Year WarCollege football is for rabidly delusional true believers, mass hallucinators, duped marks, and complete lunatics. Which is to say, it’s the truest American sporlƒƒ