The novel is divided into three sections. In the first, Gary Harkness, the narrator, meets Taft Robinson, Logos College's first Black football player as well as Major Staley, the teacher of his modern warfare class. This class sparks Gary's developing obsession with nuclear warfare. Gary begins dating Myrna Corbett and an assistant coach commits suicide just as the crowning game of the season approaches.
The second section is solely a play-by-play retelling of the Big Game itself, where the main thematic content of the novel exists. DeLillo's disconnected, detached prose focuses the text on certain isolated images and dialogue throughout the game.
The third section surrounds the aftermath of the game as well as the impact of the plane-crash death which kills Logos College's founder. Gary, filled with ennui after these events, plays a complex war game with Major Staley; the novel's metaphor of football as warfare is challenged in the line "warfare is warfare." Taft Robinson admits that he has a morbid interest in the Holocaust which mirror's Gary's obsession. The novel ends with Gary being hospitalized for a mental breakdown, his future uncertain.