College Football List #1

College football season is right around the corner. This was made clear to me by the headlines recently declaring that my team, the Pitt Panthers, was picked by the media to win the Big East. I had two reactions to this: first, I threw up, and second, I cancelled my season tickets in short order. We can’t have expectations like this; we will fold to a 4-8 season more quickly than President Obama hired lobbyists in his administration.

I am going to take a break from writing about the Bucs to write about college football and why I love it. In fact, I have few loves in life, but two of them are college football, and lists. I love lists, and for the next couple of weeks I’m going to randomly offer you lists about my favorite things in college football. Today we will start with a generic list: The 5 Things I Love about College Football; this list will probably be the subject material for future lists. This can double as the start of a “Why I Like College Football Way More Than the NFL” post, if you want.

1. Rivalries – every team has them, and they are always sweet. You get one game versus your rival every year, which is different than almost every other sport. That gives you bragging rights for the entire year. Ruining your rivals’ season is just about the best feeling in the world, especially when it happens on their turf.
2. Rivalry trophies – akin to the first, but a little different. College football teams play rivalry games and collect trophies, like the “Little Brown Jug” or the “Keg of Nails”. These are great trophies, much better than almost any championship trophy (maybe save the Stanley Cup).
3. Fight songs – seeing your team’s marching band take the field before the game and riling everybody up by playing the fight song is one of the best experiences you can have at a college football game. Singing it after a touchdown is even sweeter.
4. The Bowl System – its corrupt, rewards teams unfairly, tilted toward the “haves”, and really ancient. And yet, there is something about it that makes me sit down on New Years Day to watch bowl games from 10 a.m. to midnight.
5. College Gameday – the best preview show for any sport. I love me some Kirk and Corso. They do a good job with the stories, and preview most of the big games of the weekend. When Corso puts on the helmet at the end of the show, its shameless pandering at its absolute best, especially if he gets to fire some type of toy gun.

Well, that’s a good start. What do you like about college football? Be on the lookout for more lists before the season kicks off on September 3rd!