The writing in "End Zone" is continuously energetic, shifty, fun to watch for its own sake.

And, though the serious fan may care less about the final score than the quality of play, "End Zone" adds up impressively. DeLillo's first novel, "Americana" …, was also beautifully written and paced, but its materials seemed pretty familiar—the New York media man (TV documentaries in this case) alienated from work, family and love, who hits the road with a company of losers and drop-outs and, after seeing Middle America at its touching, exhausted worst, makes an ambiguous return to where he left off. If "Americana" was a savagely funny portrait of middle-class anomie in a bad time, it was also too long and visibly ambitious, and too much like too many other recent novels, to seem as good as it should have.

In "End Zone" DeLillo finds in college football a...