Matt Hinton

  • Cover of Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America
    Politics January 3, 2016

    By any measure, the business of college football is booming. The sport is more popular and, thanks to market-savvy conference realignments and a round of expansive new television deals, more lucrative than ever. In January, the first edition of the College Football Playoff delivered record audiences for ESPN and a windfall for the sport’s major conferences that dwarfed the once gaudy-seeming returns from the defunct Bowl Championship Series. Ratings for the college semifinals and the subsequent national-championship game surpassed even those for some NFL playoff games—a powerfully valuable proof of marketability for a media age in which many homes embrace