Tribal

September 14, 2015
For someone who claims to love big-time college football as much as Roberts does in this memoir and cultural history, Roberts is certainly critical of the game, going so far as to predict that “the end times are coming for college football.” Roberts is a literature and creative writing professor at Florida State University, the alma mater of elite quarterback and alleged rapist Jameis Winston (the NFL’s 2015 #1 draft pick). She inherited her father’s FSU season tickets and has battled conflicted emotions ever since. With sass, wit, and colorful streaks of cynicism bordering on viciousness, Roberts delivers readers a female fan’s perspective of the game she both compares to slavery and labels “muscular Christianity.” She stretches an essay for the Oxford American into a book-length explanation of a maligned yet revered game, supplementing countless vignettes with references to history, literature, religion, and sex. The author also shares disturbing stories about Robert Champion, a Florida A&M Marching Band drum major who died following a 2011 hazing incident, and Calvin Patterson, the first African-American student to attend FSU on a football scholarship, who killed himself in 1972. While she forces fans to reevaluate their devotion to the game, Roberts concludes she still cares “way too much, even though I know better.” Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

October 15, 2015

Roberts is renowned as a contributor to National Public Radio; she is also a literature professor at Florida State University and a self-loathing Florida State football fan. This book is the equivalent of punk rocker Joan Jett wailing "I Hate Myself for Loving You" without the driving backbeat. Divided into quarters to allow Roberts to examine the game through the usual academic lenses, here the author dissects class, race, and gender--which she refers to as "America's top three psychoses." The book's first part deals with the importance of hatred to football fans and then proceeds onto the intersection of religion and football, gender roles within the sport, and lastly racial divides. While Roberts is clearly well read, the overall tone is smug superiority sprinkled with gratuitous political japes all exhibiting the same bias. VERDICT This volume seems to be aimed at readers who already hate the sport.

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