A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of audiences—those who know it’s football and those who are about to find out.

Chuck Klosterman—New York Times bestselling cultural critic, journalist, and, yes, football psychotic—did not write this book to help you deepen your appreciation of football, or to be that person at a party, or to make better bets, or validate your preexisting views, positive or negative. Football does in fact do all of these things, but only as steps on the path to the commanding heights.

Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects—phenomena that bulk so large in the world that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on American television were pro football games. The most-watched non-football game, the Oscars, landed at 40. Number 39 was a meaningless game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Jacksonville Jaguars. This is not an anomaly. And in no other country does one sport have such a chokehold. No, not even soccer in Brazil. Odder still, when you break down the time spent in live action in a three-hour game, the average is eleven minutes. It’s as if 95 percent of The Fast and The Furious was spent pumping gas.

Chuck Klosterman gets to the bottom of it. He takes us to Texas, from the religion of high school ball to America’s Team [sic] and its uncanny impact on a young boy in North Dakota named Chuck. He looks at the greatness question, and the gambling question(s), and the symbolic caricature of the coach. He explains the eerie perfection of the marriage between this sport and television that reveals so much about its popularity and how we experience reality. He even conjures a looming extinction event for football. It’s not what you think.

A century ago, Yale’s legendary coach Walter Camp wrote his unified theory of the game. He called it Football. Chuck Klosterman has given us a new Camp for the new age.