The central social concern in all of Jenkins's writing is the place and func tion of sports in American culture.

Semi-Tough is concerned with professional football and the craziness that surrounds and defines it. The world of professional football is casually racist, profligate of humans and money. Jenkins, loving the sport, is not in the least reverent about its place in culture, and he has an insider's knowledge of the excesses that haunt it. As social satire, Semi-Tough, comically exposes human vice and folly and the "sins" of a small segment of society — the closed world of football players, their women, families, owners, and hangerson.

Additionally, the novel depicts certain social values identifiable as uniquely Texan. Semi-Tough celebrates Texan brashness, boastfulness, hardheadedness; it also displays Jenkins's pleasure in the idiom of Texas — profane, inventive, comic.