Why College Football Rocks

My dad and I went to the Georgia Southern game against Furman today, and I have to say this reminded me of the one thing I regret about my choice in college. I loved Berry, and I still love the place. The campus is gorgeous, it is a respected school for its academic programs and I met my wife and some of my best friends there. While Berry is a gorgeous school and had a few competitive NAIA sports, it didn't have a football team. NAIA football would have been pretty lame, especially at a school with decidedly academics-first priorities, but there's just something about college football in this country. Most college sports are pretty sparsely attended by spectators. College baseball games are a joke, perhaps due to the constant tink of aluminum on hardball. College soccer games make MLS soccer games look like they actually have a fan base. College basketball gets decent attendance, but it's really only important at schools where the football team sucks.

There's a reason many of the BCS conference universities usually have stadiums that are big enough to be indistinguishable from a NFL stadium. Baseball's nickname of The National Pastime is outdated. Football is the biggest sport in the US and its importance to the college experience is undeniable. The teams have a built-in rabid, energetic fan base (students) and a enthusiastic, but more stolid, fan base in the alumni. I've never seen the passion for a professional football team that could come close to the heat produced by the fanaticism many of the major universities draw. Every fall semester's social schedule revolves about the games and even the people who don't care about football care about their team.

I missed all of that in college. I only attended one basketball game and that was so I could photograph it for my photojournalism class. I think I may have seen a few minutes of a soccer game once, and I never even thought about watching a baseball game. I would have gone to every football home game had Berry even had a NAIA team, but that part of the experience would have been even better had it been a big NCAA Div. 1 or Div. 1AA team (BCS and FCS are freaking retarded and I refuse to use them except to say that they're freaking retarded.) Whereas big university kids have something to be ridiculously passionate about and even be a dick about for their school, I'm left with something more like fondness for my alma mater. There's not that chance to go to a game and act stupid or debate with other fans just whose team is better and keep my mind on my alma mater for a goodly portion of every year. Instead it's just nostalgia for the past. I just hope that one day Berry ends up with a team. Our cross-town rivals have had a team for a few years now and they're a similarly sized school and still in the NAIA with us as far as I know. It'd be great for both schools to have a rivalry in the only sport in our culture that brings with it so much passion.

I even think that college football is superior to the NFL. I'm not talking about in quality of play. That'd be a retarded claim. The players in the NFL are on average more talented, more skilled, stronger, and more experienced. They have more time to work on their game plans not having bowling classes and such to get in their way during the day. Instead, it's the passion of the college fans that aren't matched by pro fans and the fact that the Appalachian State upset of Michigan (or even Standford's upset of USC) just can not happen in the NFL. The Patriots come close to making that happen this year, but if the Texans, Raiders or even the Falcons pulled off the upset, it wouldn't create the same shock and awe that Boise State's OT upset of Oklahoma did in their bowl game last year. The NFL upset is a unexpected, but it doesn't seem impossible. The worst team in the NFL is just a player or two and a few flaps of a butterfly's wings away from going to the Super Bowl. The best team is just a couple of players and a few flips of a coin away from not even making the playoffs. Many upsets in college require every player playing above himself and a ton of lucky breaks to pull it off and that makes those rare events so much more exciting than anything the NFL can provide. In addition to all of that, there's just something about players who play for nothing more than the love of the game. Sure there are guys there who're only in college to play football and just waiting until they can declare for the draft, but most of the guys on the field every Saturday will never play in the NFL and have no illusions that they might. Even a player whose playing to get into the NFL is more fun to watch than one already there in the same way that I find a minor league baseball game watchable when I can't stand the MLB.