College Football: Better Than Pretty Much Everything. Ever.
| 13
|
Growing up in Columbus, Ohio pretty much insured that I would be a die-hard college football fan. Yes, I am a rabid Ohio State follower and no, Colin Cowherd, I am not a raving lunatic who will spew "Carmen, Ohio" every time someone mentions the word college, football, Keith Jackson (one word), Fiesta, Rose, Orange, Sugar, or Bowl. I am one of the many fans that gets carried away every fall. We get carried away because college football has so many unique traits and so much devotion, tradition, even faith, built into it that it's impossible not to fall for college football.
Fans from Hawaii and USC across to Boston College love the sport because every game matters. Yes, Texas is going to pummel Baylor every year, but if they don't....season's over for the 'Horns. So the game may not be interesting to watch, but you better believe that it matters. Conference Championships, Rivalry games, mismatches and everything in between need to be navigated near flawlessly to finish the season on top. The Steelers simply got hot at the right time and won out through the playoffs, they also lost 5 times last year. Five losses puts you in the Alamo bowl in college.
Supporters of the Miami 'Canes up north to the blue turf boys of Boise State have "their" team and they care for them so deeply growing up, that entering their formative years of college, they enroll at "their" school. They devote 4 years of their life to the team that they live and die by and I have never heard anyone regret it. I know that my biggest regret in picking an East-coast school is that I don't get to watch my beloved Bucks grind out a victory each Saturday. Hearing about it from nearly all my high school friends, who went to OSU or somewhere nearby, is not an easy thing to endure. Show me a fan of professional sports who changes jobs or moves to a different city, just so they can watch thier team each weekend. I guarantee that there aren't enough people who have done that to fill up the Orange Bowl and it's meager capacity of 74,177. People build their lives around the team that they support and instead of being pathetic, (like those guys that paint their faces for the Detroit Lions) it's seen as "following tradition".
Earlier I said that nearly 75,000 people is meager. Yes, that number is meager in the world of college sports. Unless you are 100,000+ you don't even place in the top 5 largest stadiums. Pro stadiums are tiny and often go unfilled. Ohio State-Michigan tickets can be scalped for over 4 times their face value because the 110,000 seats at the Big House or Horseshoe aren't enough to sate the demand of the eager fans. Tennessee holds even more! It is hard to imagine and can't be fully appreciated unless seen in person. Oh by the way, there are usually another 20,000 fans tailgating around the stadium for these games.
I have friends from college that have never been to a real college football game and I started making plans a year ago to get them out to Columbus for a game. I know that they will be in complete awe of the festivities that surround Columbus on game day. Every school is like this too: Tennessee, Penn State, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida State, Every SEC team, Virginia Tech etc, etc boast some of the richest fan bases and "fever pitch" hardly does Saturday atmosphere any justice.
If you are a big fan of your team, you want everyone to know it and you want other people to realize that you have been following recruiting ever since the last bowl game finished. It's like a badge of courage. College football fans go to spring games just to get a small taste of their team and to hold them over until September when they can finally release their craziness again. Craziness, insanity, faith...these are all appropriate words for college football.
College football is all about extremes. You have to go undefeated to win a championship (it's happened once in modern pro football). Stadiums are packed beyond capacity and tickets are sold insanely beyond face-value. Fans follow their team through recruiting, practices and scrimmages as soon as the season ends. Fans track former players through their pro careers just because they were used to play at thier school. A lot of college fans could tell you every pro player to come from their school in the last 5 or so years and pretty close to where they went in each draft.
The players may leave to go to the NFL, but the coach rarely does. Joe Paterno is starting his 41st season....41st! The longest tenured coach in the NFL right now is Bill Cowher and he is at 15. Coaches are beloved figure heads for entire programs and legends in their own time. Because people can't get attached to the rapidly changing players that go to their school, they instead get attached to the coach and to the school. This breeds a passion and a loyalty more intense than the player driven loyalties that pro teams provide. I'm a Cavs fan, but if LeBron leaves, I dont think I would ever watch them again.
Here are some other things that are better than any other sport:
"Holy Toledo!" We will miss you Keith.
Cheerleaders. I'll take the USC Song Girls any day over the Cowboys Cheerleaders.
TBDBITL, dotting the "i", enough said.
Horse-drawn carriages riding around on the field,, shootouts, Cocky, the Swamp, Blue Turf, the annual MAC upset, recruiting, recruiting violations, ranking controversies, BCS mysteries, coming back for senior year, live gunfire, live animals, mascot fist-fights, throwing spears on to the field, visiting sections, cocktail parties and everything in between.
Finally, there is kickoff. All of the above mentioned things are precursors to the main event: football. It's so much more diverse than the NFL; options, power-I's, spreads and fake punts make this game unique. It's the one sport where there is no "right" way to do things, depending on the team and just plain blind-luck, anything can happen. It's better this way. With 117 teams there is any combination of things that can happen and it makes things incredibly entertaining and amazingly frustrating.
So, I'm officially inviting fans of pro teams to pick out a favorite fight-song, or mascot and give college football a try. I know you won't be disappointed because college football has something for everyone and once you have seen the "12th man" (please don't sue me Texas A&M), burned a couch, torn down a goal post and argued about the latest BCS standings you won't ever want to go back.
Source
- www.charlieadams.blogspot.com
Date
Tue 06/27/06, 6:25 am EST
