One of the more discouraging aspects of being a fan of college football at this particular moment is the implicit understanding that the sport no longer prioritizes you. The more you love this sport, the less you matter.
The person college football is catering to right now, their ideal customer, is not the lifelong fan who has had the same tailgate spot for decades, or obsesses over their ideal quad box for their Saturday television viewing: It’s basically a guy who is only half paying attention, in, like, New Jersey, or Arizona maybe, halfheartedly glancing at his phone, maybe thinking about making a bet, a guy who doesn’t particularly care that much about college football but does recognize the name “Michigan” or “Georgia” or “Notre Dame” and thinks, “OK, maybe I’ll watch that game. That’s A Big Game.”
You and I — the tailgaters, the season ticket holders, the podcast listeners, the obsessives, the beautiful lunatics of the message boards — are not needed for growth, the sole, desperate motivation of the television executives who run the sport in this age. We are a given. This, I want to be clear, makes us awesome. You, like me, pay to read about college football. You are a beautiful unicorn: You are the lifeblood of this sport. (You are the reason any of this exists. Don’t allow them to make you forget it.)
This obsession leads us to be taken for granted, though. We can’t make the numbers go up. They already counted us.
In this way, we are cursed: We know too much. We care about college football so passionately that we can’t help but want to absorb as much as we can about it, and that curiosity can take some of the fun out of it. We can see the wizard behind the curtain. We know how much that quarterback was paid to transfer. We know what Tony Petitti is trying to do. We know what the College Sports Commission is, and why it probably won’t work. We know more change we probably won’t like is coming. It can be difficult not to dwell on all of that when you’re trying to read about your favorite team, or check out recruiting rankings, or yell at a columnist for their AP Top 25 — you know, the fun stuff. We’re cursed with caring too much.
Because they already have us, and thus don’t need to worry about us. Nearly every decision made in college football — and nearly every frustration you have with it — can be explained by this.
Once the game begins, none of the myriad issues surrounding college football need to matter. (Jonathan Ferrey / Getty Images)
It’s why Oregon will play a conference game 2,460 miles from its campus this year. (This is farther than Dublin is from Egypt.)
It’s why you need 30 subscriptions to watch all the games you want to watch, if you can even find them.
It’s why it feels like half the time inside the stadium on gameday is spent waiting for the game to come back from a TV timeout.
It’s why the college football pregame shows are racing each other to hire people who do not, in fact, know anything about college football.
It’s why all the good Big Ten games start at freaking noon.
It is why everything has changed so much, so fast. With no one actually in charge of college football, no one whose job it is to serve the sport’s interest rather than their own, the only goal for everybody involved ends up being: Get yours.
You see it. We all see it.
This can lead to despair, the helplessness that comes when you realize the thing you care so deeply about does not care about you anymore.
It was not always this way. Just about everything your most hardcore, knowledgeable college football fan could have asked for over the last two decades, we have gotten. Twenty years ago, if you would have told me that we’d have a multi-team playoff (with a bracket!), that I’d be able to watch every game I wanted to, that the players would have the opportunity to get paid for putting their bodies on the line for our entertainment, that the NCAA and all of its arrogance would essentially be rendered toothless and that Reggie Bush would have his Heisman back, I’d have been ecstatic. Any college football fan would have been. There was a time when we felt like we had some power, that we were being listened to. It no longer feels like that.
And thus, all this change. And all this frustration.
I have good news, though. This time every year, even during this time of extreme, constant upheaval, has a way of saving the day: The games are starting. And then you get to be back in charge.
Once the game begins — once there are human beings running around, throwing the ball around and tackling each other, with helmets and everything — none of this has to mean anything.
The thing about being a sports fan is that you, specifically, can control your experience: It can be whatever you want it to be. You can think, when the quarterback goes back in the pocket, “I do not like that this person drives a fancy car and does advertisements on his social media. Quarterbacks did not do either one of those things when I first started watching college football.” You can be frustrated that half the guys on the offensive line are transfers whose names you haven’t learned yet, and you are a little worried they will transfer somewhere else by the time you do. You can still grouse about the analyst on the pregame show who was bleating on and on, like a mule, or perhaps a yak.
You can let it all drive you nuts.
Or you can just … not. You do not actually have to do any of these things. You can do whatever you want. You can just watch the games. You can shape this how you please. The thing about college football is that it is fun. It changes in ways that aren’t always pleasant, in ways that could, theoretically anyway, place the sport in some sort of long-term existential peril. But watching a game, the experience of soaking in a full Saturday of college football, whether in the stands, at a tailgate or on your couch, is not a long-term activity: It’s happening right now.
The thing about being a sports fan is that you can control your experience: It can be whatever you want it to be. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
This is whatever you want it to be. Maybe the experience, the metatextual stuff, the context of it all, maybe that’s all different from when you first fell in love with the sport. But the game itself is the same. When you are grilling pregame in the same tent with the same people you’ve been grilling pregame with for years, when a bunch of huge men wearing your school’s colors run onto the field and nearly 100,000 people scream the same thing you are screaming, when your team is driving down the field down two with a minute left, and you’re seeing the kicker warming up on the sideline, and your heart is starting to pound out of your chest, are you thinking about any of the things that bother you about college football? Or are you thinking: I think my face might be melting off?
This stuff is great. This stuff has always been great. It’s why you’re here, and it’s why I’m here. There is value in remembering that. It’s worth hanging onto and cherishing in the midst of all the junk that surrounds it. We’ll complain about all the stuff wrong with the sport, the way we complain about a family member we know everything about, all their flaws, all their weirdness, all their problems: We love them despite all of that. Maybe even because of that.
This sport drives us crazy. We love it too much to leave. This is a reason to cherish it. This is a reason to hold on even tighter.
(Photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
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