Tommy Turner is an English teacher at football-crazed Midwestern University. Although he is uninvolved with the politics of the day, Tommy suddenly finds himself the center of a free-speech debate on campus. An editorial in a student magazine praises him for planning to read Bartolomeo Vanzetti's sentencing statement to his class as an example of eloquent composition, even in broken English composed by a non-professional. The school's conservative trustees, led by Ed Keller threaten to fire Tommy if he doesn't withdraw the reading from his lecture. The subject of free speech and Tommy's dilemma of conscience anchor the dramatic subplot's social significance. The lighter comic triangle plot concerns a return visit to attend the big football game by Joe Ferguson, a former football hero and onetime love interest of Turner's wife Ellen. Joe is recently divorced and he rekindles Ellen's romantic notions at the very moment when her marriage to Tommy is being tested by the events on campus.