The Hot Seat, Ben MathisLilley
The Hot Seat, Ben MathisLilley
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

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

Author: Ben Mathis-Lilley

Narrator: Peter Berkrot

Unabridged: 7 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 08/30/2022


Synopsis

A fan spends the Michigan football team’s 2021 season searching for answers about human nature, American history, and the related subject of whether 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 43 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 this 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on September 16, 2022

Admittedly, I'm exactly the fan discussed at length in this book, so I am the target audience.......more

Goodreads review by EVAN on July 30, 2022

This is the perfect mix of Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch” with politics, sociology, religion and culture. During the 2021 season, Ben Mathis-Lilley visited three schools (his and my beloved and frustrating University of Michigan; LSU; and FAU, with side trips to Clemson and MSU) to write about fandom in......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on November 22, 2022

Nothing better for the week of The Game than a book about Michigan football! Against the backdrop of the 2021 season, Mathis-Lilly delves into fans’ relationships with college football with a lens that is at times poignant, incisive, and hilarious. I appreciated how relatable his account was (being......more

Goodreads review by Julia on January 11, 2024

Incredibly niche book for those who love Michigan football. Bought this in the DTW airport because I was sad to leave the mitten and wanted a reminder of home. The author is surprisingly hilarious. A few sections are rather long winded but lots of interesting points about football, America and socia......more

Goodreads review by Brett on December 21, 2022

I am rounding up due to my Michigan fan status, but this one is a 2.5 star for me. I wanted to like this more, as the season he is storytelling and reporting on was a magical one. Yet I could not get beyond the insistence of the author to write as if he is blogging. There is a steady stream of tweet......more