Tate Arges

Editor's note: This column belongs to a two part series about college football, with an emphasis on the coverage of Duke football. You can find Part One, “Why Tony the Tiger’s Sun Bowl Mattered” here. On my flight home from El Paso after the Blue Devils’ Sun Bowl victory, I found myself wrestling with a strange feeling. Just 48 hours earlier, I had left Durham deeply disappointed.

A sense of urgency filled the second floor of the Duke Law School on the morning of Feb. 6., where the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy was hosting its annual symposium. Aptly titled “Protecting Fundamental Rights in the Face of Threats to Constitutional Democracy,” the day’s premise was laid out plainly and without irony.

Journalist and author, Chuck Klosterman, recently took on the unenviable task of both describing why football has taken such a hold on American culture and predicting how it will, as all monoliths, eventually fail. In his book, aptly titled “Football,” Klosterman emphasizes that football, especially compared to other sports, is uniquely consumable on the television — it’s better through a screen than in person.