Synopses & Reviews
From an award-winning writer, journalist, and college football expert: an entertaining cultural history that highlights the key moments, games, personalities, and scandals of the popular and controversial American pastime.
Every Saturday in the fall, countless college students, alumni, and sports fans wake up filled with a particular kind of hope and excitement, ready for their team’s game. Half of them finish the day in joyous celebration, and the other half in abject depression, but all of them are ever ready to do it over again the next weekend.
College football is one of the unifying cornerstones of American culture. Since the first game in 1869, football has grown from a stratified offshoot of rugby to a ubiquitous part of our national identity. Today, as college conferences fracture and grow, amateur athlete status is called into question, and a playoff system threatens to replace big-money bowl games, we’re in the midst of the most dramatic transitional period in the history of the sport.
Michael Weinreb’s Season of Saturdays examines the evolution of college football, from the moral and ethical quandaries that informed its past to the fascinating changes that may affect its future. Since its nascent days on elite Ivy League campuses, college football has inspired both school spirit and controversy. Weinreb explores the game’s inherent violence, its early seeds of big-business greed, and its impact on institutions of higher learning. Filtered through the stories of such iconic coaches as Woody Hayes and Joe Paterno and Steve Spurrier, Season of Saturdays also celebrates some of the greatest games of all time while exploring their larger significance. Part popular history, part memoir—and always uniquely American—Season of Saturdays is both a look back at how the sport became so fraught with problems, and a look ahead at how the sport might survive another century.
Review
“Season of Saturdays is simply an unforgettable read. It is a deeply moving portrait of America’s greatest game, exquisitely written by Michael Weinreb. The reader is captured and captivated from the first line and it holds all the way to the index at the end. I could go on but I am thinking about starting Season of Saturdays again—I liked it that much.”
Review
“This book is really two books, interwoven into one. The first is an entertaining history of America’s most interesting game, described by someone who knows. The second is the story of a man trying to work through his deepest fears and insecurities by sitting on the couch and watching TV (and—in all likelihood—caring too much about what he sees). But the reason the first book matters is because the second book explains most people who love college football.”
Review
“Michael Weinreb journeys through the black and white college football world of the nostalgia junkie and the cynical critic and finds both of them wrong: college football, like America, is a culture of troubling, electrifying gray. This is our story.”
Review
"No sport explains America quite like college football, and no writer explains college football with more passion and insight than Michael Weinreb. Season of Saturdays is both fun and insightful, and belongs on the shelf of anybody who loves the sport."
Review
"A passionate defense of college football... entertaining and enlightening for both rabid fans and newbies."
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“A discursive, informative, sardonic, and often hilarious account of a sport attended by 50 million colorfully dressed fans every year. The book is being published at a time when the game is, as it often has been, in transition and under considerable scrutiny…questions of race, corruption, amateurism, trickery, hypocrisy, and hyper-aggressiveness are integral components of this absorbing book.”
Review
"[A] beautifully written mix of memoir and reportage that tracks college ball through 14 key games, giving depth and meaning to all."
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“[A] beautiful meditation….well-researched….studded with sharply distilled character sketches….an intimate and deeply personal rumination on the sport’s meaning.”
Review
“Wry, quirky, fascinating….This surely is one of the most enjoyable books of the college football season….Weinreb wrestles in captivating prose with the violence, hypocrisy and corruption that are endemic to the sport at its most cutthroat level.”
Review
“College football is a confounding sport with an arcane history at the intersection of higher education, the twilight of adolescence, and semi-professional football, all institutions of questionable integrity. The mix is captured and explained beautifully in Michael Weinreb’s new book 'Season of Saturdays'….required reading.”
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“A must-read for the college fan.”
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“Snappy and well-written.”
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“[An] engaging and entertaining read.”
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"Every college football fan needs this book...Weinreb is such an entertaining writer, even those who hate the sport will love this book."
Review
"This cultural history of the game belongs on the shelf of every hardcore college football fan. [Weinreb's] candor and passion are displayed on every page."
Review
"A must-read for any acolyte of Saturday football."
About the Author
Michael Weinreb has written about college football for The New York Times, GQ, Sports on Earth, ESPN, and Grantland. He has been featured on NPR’s This American Life and ESPN’s 30 for 30, and has appeared on CNN, ESPN, and ESPN Radio. His book Game of Kings won the Quill Award for Best Sports Books of 2007. He lives in San Francisco, California.