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

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, as Slate writer and superfan Ben Mathis-Lilley does in this book: Why are we doing this?

The Hot Seat is 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 Seat is an exploration of the all-consuming culture of fandom, and why it matters.

Ben Mathis-Lilley is a senior writer for Slate.com, where he’s spent six years contributing short posts, columns, and feature stories about news, politics, and sports. His coverage of high-interest subjects like the presidential campaign is regularly given the site’s lead homepage spot, and his posts are among the most-read and most-shared articles Slate produces. He also appears as a guest on Slate’s popular sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen.