Doing a PhD at a famous football school: how can I ask for time off to attend games? Consider a famous football school in the U.S., for example Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Auburn, and Ohio State.
I am doing a PhD in a STEM field at one of these schools, and on 6 or 7 Saturdays of the semester, there is a home game for the football team, and I'd like to attend the game and be a part of the tradition.  It's likely an all-day affair, pre-game, going to the game, and more festivities after the game.
My research advisor isn't into sports — at all.  And the expectation is that we're doing work on these Saturdays, while our football stadium nearby is filled with 80,000 or so fans cheering on our team.
Would it be reasonable to ask my advisor for Saturdays off, so that I can participate in our school's football tradition?
How could I go about saying this to him, without upsetting him, or coming off as &quot;unfocused&quot;?
Clarification: Plenty of communication takes place on weekends. My advisor is very intense, micromanages almost, but that style suits me well, and I find his dedication really admirable. But I don't want to miss out on football either; I'm not in graduate school for very long.
It’s a tricky situation and you will want to filter any advice given here (including mine offered below) through your own understanding of the details of the situation and the personalities involved.
That being said, my tentative guess as to the best strategy for handling it is to do two things:

Don’t mention to your advisor your football game attendance plans. It’s your private business what you do on weekends. Simply go about your private business as a normal person does. (And for heavens’ sake don’t “ask for Saturdays off”. You don’t ask for what is rightfully yours.*) Any work can wait until after game day festivities are over. You’re a grad student not an indentured servant.

Work hard and be productive and responsive to your advisor during normal work hours/days (including non-game weekend days if you feel like doing work on those days).


If you do the combination of those two things, I suspect (but cannot be certain) you’ll be fine and your advisor will be completely happy with you, perhaps after an initial adjustment period where you might have to deflect some questions from him about why you didn’t answer some email right away on a Saturday. If that happens you can just say you were busy, had an event to go to, or, if sufficient trust has had time to develop between the two of you, simply tell him the truth (but make sure to state this as a statement of fact, not a request for permission or validation, and not stated in an apologetic tone where you volunteer unnecessary details about why you want to attend football games as you sort of did here).
*
If this is a problem, I’m sorry to have to tell you but you’re in an abusive relationship and you likely should be expecting much bigger problems in your relationship with your advisor than a conflict over attending football games.