I went to a football school, which meant that I went to a university that served up education and was simultaneously operating a sports franchise.

Orlean’s line is a wry indictment of the way big-time college athletics can dominate the identity and priorities of a university. By calling her university a “football school,” she suggests that education is treated as a product the institution “serves up,” while the real engine resembles a professional “sports franchise” with its own revenue streams, branding, and public attention. The humor depends on the uneasy juxtaposition of two missions—learning and entertainment-business—implying that students may experience campus life as shaped less by intellectual culture than by the demands and spectacle of competitive sports. The quote resonates as social commentary on commercialization, institutional incentives, and the blurred boundary between amateur and professional athletics in higher education.