The End of College Football

“A compelling indictment of American collegiate football . . . . a serious examination of a sport that’s long avoided accountability.”—Booklist, Starred review

"Bracing . . . . its catalog of injustices might make even diehard fans question their complicity in a commodity spectacle that risks the health of young men—about half of whom are Black, according to recent reports — and earns coaches, more than three-quarters of whom are white, massive paydays.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The End of College Football is a necessary provocation of the collegiate athletic system and exploitative sport systems in general. Implications from this book will be realized for years to come; however, it is critically relevant to the current environment regarding college football.”—Sociology of Sport Journal

“Via raw and disturbing testimonies from former players, anonymised because these schools have a long and powerful reach, Kalman-Lamb and Silva have pieced together a compelling argument that college gridiron is not a sport but a brutal industry where young, mostly black men are chewed up and spat out . . . . this book teems with evidence that for most participants it remains a form of indentured servitude where mere lip service is paid to delivering any sort of proper education.”—Irish Times

“A must read . . . . The genuinely critical and radical sociology that oozes throughout The End of College Football is desperately needed to shake up the status-quo of performance focused capitalist sport, and all the grotesqueness that comes with it.”—Critical Sociology

“Kalman-Lamb and Silva’s most persuasive justification for college football’s abolition [is] its inherent violence, and the inevitable devastating injuries that accompany it . . . . Importantly, the authors emphasize that the violence of tackle football is not only baked into its game play, it is celebrated as its defining characteristic.”—Public Books

“A necessary read.”—Mid-Theory

“This book deserves to be read widely. . . . [T]he clarity of argument, the power of the players’ quotes, and the accessibility of Kalman-Lamb and Silva’s writing made the book easy to read and fascinating to think about.”—Leisure Studies

“The End of College Football, like a great game, hooks you early and doesn’t let up. Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva take us behind the scenes of one of America’s favorite pastimes, showing how athletes are exploited and abused by a system that purports to elevate and revere them. Knowing the toll this sport takes, I will never see a tackle the same way. Every college football fan should read this searing exposé.”—Victor Ray, author of On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care

“This sobering account, largely centered on the voices and experiences of the athletes themselves, exposes the exploitative and structurally coercive nature of big-time college football. It is an urgently important book that should have fans, players, and leaders in higher education questioning the moral sustainability of college football.”—Adia Benton, Northwestern University