College
Story Stream
All Is Unfinished February 18, 2025
Fama is a fickle deity. at the turn of the 20th century, Henri Bergson was one of the most famous people in the world, and certainly the most famous philosopher. Enormous crowds attended his lectures at the Collège de France in Paris—there are photog...
Where Love Goes to Die February 17, 2025
Universities used to be some of the best places in America to find a date. Sometimes they still are. At the University of Chicago, where I am a student and famously “where fun goes to die,” most of my peers are interesting, attractive, and bright. Th...
How the Super Bowl Stole Football’s Soul February 07, 2025
For Americans, bigger is always better. We “go big or go home”. Big Pharma makes our medicine and Big Tech builds our phones. We wash down Big Macs with Big Gulps and jam to Biggie Smalls. College football is much the same. “Big four” bowl games once...
The Kings of College Radio February 06, 2025
Not since the muzak corporation has there been an institution that soundtracks drugstores, supermarkets, and shopping malls more readily than R.E.M. After monstrous airplay across the past three decades, one imagines even the most oblivious listener ...
Who Asked for a Goonies Reboot? February 05, 2025
The beloved film The Goonies, which first came out in 1985, will reportedly have a sequel in 2026-27.I confess that my initial reaction to this as to the recent spate of rehashes, remakes, and unnecessary sequels (looking at you, Joker: Folie à Deux)...
College Football Is Not and Should Not Try to Be the NFL February 03, 2025
In the days following the College Football National Championship Game, Outkick founder Clay Travis took to X to note that:Just 22.1 million viewers watched Ohio State-Notre Dame, the third lowest playoff title game viewership on record. Truly awful n...
Is Literature Losing Its Audience Because of Politics? December 09, 2024
Americans are bored of reading. A 2021 Gallup poll found that the average American now reads 12.6 books per year, down from 18.5 in the late 1990s. The contrast is even starker in college-educated readers, whose yearly book quota has dropped to 14.6 ...
The Struggle To Separate Art From the Artist December 09, 2024
Aaron Gwyn, a novelist and English professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was not always so interested in the written word.Growing up in Oklahoma, he was far from a star student. He had middling grades in high school, but when he arr...
Trump Must Break Up the College Cartel December 09, 2024
Perhaps no sector better exemplifies the economic recklessness, inflation, and elitism that Americans rejected last month than academia. What was once a beacon of Western enlightenment has devolved into a profiteering industry that survives on Washin...
Ashton Jeanty’s Long Run to College Football Stardom December 06, 2024
For miles and miles, Ashton Jeanty peered out the window of the team bus, watching the European countryside float past him. It was 2018, and Jeanty was a ninth grader on the Naples Middle/High School Wildcats football team, traveling with his teammat...
The Re-Skilling of America December 05, 2024
Should fewer Americans go to college? In 2022, 37.6% of adults without a disability had at least a bachelor’s degree. In 1990 only 20% of the older-than-25 population had a bachelor’s degree, and in 1970 the share was 11%. And yet according to the St...
I Say Forbidden Things About Sports December 02, 2024
I was shocked when I learned that private equity firms plan to take over college football.How is that even possible?...
The Science of Scheduling a College-Football Season December 02, 2024
On November 23rd, the University of Massachusetts football team played the University of Georgia. It was expected to be less of a game than a slaughter: Georgia was favored by bookmakers to win the game by more than seven touchdowns. The team, which ...
How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time December 02, 2024
An alarming phenomenon has sprung up over the past few years: Many students are arriving at college unprepared to read entire books. That’s a broad statement to make, but I spoke with 33 professors at some of the country’s top universities, and over ...
The Classroom Panopticon October 24, 2024
Is it ironic to give a prize for encouraging “open discussion and debate in the classroom” and “creating an environment where all perspectives can be heard” in the name of William F. Buckley Jr.?Although best known today as the founder of National Re...
Fear And Loathing On The Football Field October 23, 2024
We’re currently in the heart of football season. Teams at every level, from the NFL down to high school, are playing meaningful games that will define their seasons and shape the memories they carry forward. It’s an incredibly vibrant time of year ...
The Middle-Class Women Who Are Tripping Balls October 22, 2024
Picture the platonic ideal of the millennial woman, and you’re probably thinking of someone like Rachel.At 42, she has enviably unblemished skin and a nose piercing—nostril, not septum—in which she sports a delicate gold hoop. She’s been married for ...
Do Dogs Know What Art Is? October 21, 2024
Do dogs know what art is?Oscar is a big, “free-spirited” Lab mix. My husband and I adopted him when he was just a few months old. We’ve lived together as a little family for over a decade. When Oscar was a puppy, I did a one-semester residency at Bar...
This College Football Season Is Anarchy October 18, 2024
There’s half a college football season left to play, and among the wide range of possible story arcs is this fun one: Alabama and Notre Dame could miss the playoff, while BYU and James Madison could make it.College football is not a sport where anyth...
The New Burnout Generation October 18, 2024
In high school, Jayden Dial worked on a podcast, planned school events, and made a film. That was on top of doing her homework and applying to college. But sometimes, she still felt like she wasn’t doing enough.Jayden, now 18, would see kids her age ...
The Gender Divide Is a Class Divide October 17, 2024
This week, Kamala Harris released her “opportunity agenda for black men,” promising targeted loans, protection of crypto assets, and weed legalization, among other policies. It’s just the latest sign that her campaign knows it is doing historically p...
We Are in Need of Renaissance People October 08, 2024
The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristoff...
‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review October 07, 2024
I think it’s impossible to recall the appeal of 2019’s Joker—an R-rated comic book movie without any superheroes that grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide—without remembering how weird everything felt toward the end of 2019. A simmering rag...
The Rising Meaninglessness of College Football Saturdays October 07, 2024
A scroll through ESPN.com last Saturday afternoon revealed a bit of a shocker. #6 Ole Miss had lost to unranked Kentucky, 20-17.Trite as it sounds, muscle memory of sorts brought on the scroll of the scores in the first place. They’re not as meaningf...
The Evolution of Paige Bueckers October 04, 2024
Paige Bueckers glances at the legends gracing the imposing navy-blue walls here in the Connecticut women’s basketball film room. There’s Rebecca Lobo. Maya Moore. Sue Bird. The photos show each of them dominating. Winning. Celebrating. Just outside, ...
