donger need food.

That's Why They Play The Game

A friend of mine has been sharing with me (through e-mail) his views on college football in direct comparison to the NFL. He has many good points, most notably the player commitment to a given team; the long history (some go back almost a hundred years); the intense rivalries... All of which make college football an intriguing sport for me. But it will forever remain that: a curiosity. No, I had the misfortune (luck?) of going to a nerd school. Instead of a Division I-A football program with rabid fans, intense marching bands, and packed stadiums, our school was instead burdened with a Supercomputer program, an annual watermelon drop and a library that was featured in the opening credits of Simon & Simon. Nope, UCSD was not the school to go to if you wanted to have a good football team. And how silly would I look rooting for a college football team if I never went to that college, let alone live in the same town?

But the handful of lengthy e-mails did get me thinking...why do I watch football? My hometown team hasn't won the big one since before the AFL-NFL merge (I wasn't even born yet). And this past Sunday I was let down yet again with another lost postseason. So why bother? Why root for a team who in 2005 blew (what will probably be) its best chance in my lifetime to win it all? You see, I was never really a fan of the Chargers. Heck, I was never a fan of anything, really. (Well, except for those few years in college when I rooted for the Cowboys - damn what a great team). It was only after moving up here to the bay area that I began to root root root for the home team. Maybe it was just a way for me to connect to home...like that 5th grade picture of me standing next to Gill Byrd when he presented for the Citizen of the Month awards. Whatever the reason, I rooted for the home team. Because it was the right thing to do. I didn't watch every single game, read every single article, go to training camp, get autographs of players, bitch and scream at owner decisions, want to fire the coach, stay grumpy all week when they lose on Sunday, no. That wasn't me. But I watched the games when I could. And I believed that they would win. Every time. And when they lost, I believed that they'll bounce back and win next week. I never said they sucked. I never hated them.

But this past couple of weeks, going to my first college football game (ever), reading my friend's e-mail thread, and believe it or not, watching tonight's New Orleans game, it came to me what it really is all about: I just love to watch good football.

It is one of the most amazing things to watch. Forget all that fan bullsh*t or dynasties or marching bands or new stadium proposals or what have you. The football players you are watching on that field, whether they are a 2-12 team or a 14-2 team, are the absolute best players in the country. Of the 100,000 high school seniors who play football, only 215 ever make it to the NFL. Only .02% of the 9,000 college football players will ever play in the NFL. And that's what a lot of my memories about football are filled with... Watching Dan Marino leave the Jets stunned by faking a spike in the waning moments and throwing a touchdown. Seeing Tony Romo botch a field goal hold, try to run it in for a touchdown, and then bounce back to be one hell of a quarterback. Or seeing LT run; it was like God himself commanded that no one shall ever get a clean hit on him. Or laughing as Barry Sanders made Pro Bowl defenders look like 5 year old kids on a Pee Wee field. And it's not just individual performances, it's the whole game... Seeing ever changing defensive schemes, halftime adjustments, coaches' play calling strategies, pre-snap audibles, unspoken QB/WR communications...it's just so much fun to watch. (Now if only the stupid directors will utilize more wide angle shots of the entire field pre-snap instead of zooming in on the ball I'd be in absolute heaven)

The sad thing is that this is what modern-era football has reduced the sport to - individual performance. I think the league has achieved that goal of making football more popular: Less dynasties (well, except for maybe those @*!&@*&# Patriots) and teams with equal shots at the title (an expansion team making a Superbowl bid after less than 5 years? It took the Bucs 20 years to do it) have made the sport more accessible to a larger audience. They claim it's all for the fans, but the cold hard truth is that it's all for the money (more competitive teams means more people to watch means more $$) but that's a topic for a different discussion.

It's too bad, really. Those days of head coaching "legacies" and team "dynasties" are long gone. No longer do you have those teams that everyone hated for years because they were so good. So root for your team while they're winning. Because they won't be winners for long. Me? I'll continue to root root root for the home team and love watching football.

posted by VirtualErn @ 11:45 PM

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