Fever Pitch

Although he vowed to leave football behind to focus on more adult things, Hornby finds himself back at Highbury for the start of the 1976-77 season. Arsenal has made several key personnel changes in the offseason, and his excitement to see them renews his interest. Concerning this development, Hornby states “like alcoholics who feel strong enough to pour themselves just one small one, I had made a fatal mistake” (85). He is accepted to Jesus College at Cambridge in 1977, and that move, too, ironically helps renew his interest in football. Because he cannot afford to travel from Cambridge to Highbury very often, he begins regularly attending the matches of lower-division Cambridge United. Acknowledging that his life was as football-centric as ever, Hornby states, “I hung on to my boyhood self for dear life, and I let him guide me through my undergraduate years; and thus football, not for the first or last time, […] served both as a backbone and as a retardant” (92).

Although Hornby never involves himself much in campus life or academia in college, he does fall in love and experience his first serious, “stay-the night, meet-the-family, what-about-kids-one-day” relationship (94). When Arsenal last reaches the FA Cup Finals in 1972, Hornby is 15 years old, but the club gets there again in 1978, with Hornby now a 21-year-old college student.