Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America

by Diane Roberts

Overview

Part introspective soul searching, part cultural analysis, Tribal tackles the controversies plaguing college athletics, tracing the dubious historical underpinnings of Americans’ most popular sport, offering a visceral and often funny analysis of its tribal thrills and deep contradictions.

Florida State’s football team is always in the headlines, producing Heisman Trophy candidates, winning championships, and, at the same time, dealing with federal investigations into corruption and rape. Same as many big time collegiate sports programs. Seems no matter how the team transgresses off the field, if they excel on the field, everyone forgives them. Writer, professor and conflicted Seminole Diane Roberts looks at the problems plaguing her campus in Tallahassee, examining them within the context of college football itself and its significance in American life, and explores how the game shapes our culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062342621
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/27/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Diane Roberts is a contributor to NPR, the Guardian, and the Oxford American, among many other publications. She is the author of three books, and her work has been anthologized in Best American Essays and Best American Food Writing. She holds a PhD from Oxford University and teaches literature and creative writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Table of Contents

Pregame 3

First Quarter

Chapter 1 Tribal Boundaries 13

Chapter 2 Who the Hell Are We? 19

Chapter 3 At the Creation 29

Chapter 4 Clean, Old-Fashioned Hatred 35

Chapter 5 Big Game 49

Second Quarter

Chapter 6 Old-Time Religion 55

Chapter 7 Consecrated Ground 59

Chapter 8 God Is My Offensive Coordinator 67

Chapter 9 Muscular Christianity 79

Chapter 10 Gator Galahad 93

Halftime

Chapter 11 Death of a Drum Major 107

Third Quarter

Chapter 12 The Gender Bowl 125

Chapter 13 The Ladies Auxiliary 141

Four Quarter

Chapter 14 Jaboo Wins 153

Chapter 15 The Plantation 165

Chapter 16 Fighting the War All Over Again 183

Chapter 17 The Southern Way of Life 193

Chapter 18 The Fall of the House of Bowden 207

Postgame 221

Acknowledgments 227

Notes and Selected Sources 231

Index 235

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2015
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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Tribal is a lover’s quarrel with college football so raucous, so entertainingly appalled, and so wise that it goes down as easily as a shot of bourbon from a smuggled flask on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.

Will Blythe

[Tribal] affords an explanation of one of the most profound puzzles of today’s college-sports scene: why the NCAA colossus has not only secured the American psyche in a stranglehold but continues to tighten its grip.

BookForum

Those experiences were no doubt the germ of Tribal which exudes Roberts’ satirical Southern sensibility and way of wrapping hard truths in a droll, frequently bawdy and baroque kind of humor that can combine TMZ tabloid shock and Faulknerian literary awe in the same paragraph.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

10/15/2015
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.

Library Journal

A gifted writer, [Roberts] is rightly outraged by the sport and her school’s links with some of the uglier aspects of American life, but she truly adores the ‘Noles. Most readers will share her ambivalence while thoroughly enjoying her take on a troubled sport.

Booklist (starred review)

In Diane Roberts’s deft hands, football is never just a game-it’s a mirror of American attitudes toward gender, class, and especially race. Roberts is a brilliant cultural critic and a dream of a writer, and Tribal is not only timely-it’s necessary reading.

Gilbert King

People who have decided to read one book having to do with college football should choose Tribal. Roberts presents the attractions of the game as well as the recognition that college football as practiced at Florida State and places like it is indefensible-part ‘beloved tradition,’ part ‘corporate enterprise.

Boston Globe

…a penetrating examination of how and why football has infiltrated our system of higher education…

Salon

Diane Roberts is a wonder. She’s a surpassingly insightful writer and is as funny as a stand-up comic. Her book Tribal, on college football and far more, is a sui generis masterpiece.

Robert Olen Butler

Diane Roberts is irresistible, the Molly Ivins of Florida, and Tribal is essential to understanding the dynamics of American culture. Tribal isn’t just a good book, it’s a great one-and hilarious to boot.

Bob Shacochis

Those experiences were no doubt the germ of Tribal which exudes Roberts’ satirical Southern sensibility and way of wrapping hard truths in a droll, frequently bawdy and baroque kind of humor that can combine TMZ tabloid shock and Faulknerian literary awe in the same paragraph.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

…a penetrating examination of how and why football has infiltrated our system of higher education…” %COMM_CONTRIB%Salon

A gifted writer, [Roberts] is rightly outraged by the sport and her school’s links with some of the uglier aspects of American life, but she truly adores the ‘Noles. Most readers will share her ambivalence while thoroughly enjoying her take on a troubled sport.

Booklist