The Case for Earnestness
Remember the first moment, the first game, the first player that made you a college football fan? Although I had seen games before, the 1993 season was the first in which I truly invested in the sport thanks to the ahead-of-its-time quarterbacking of Charlie Ward, and Arizona’s dominant Desert Swarm defense.
The first individual moment I recall most vividly came the next year, however, when Kordell Stewart lobbed a prayer that Michael Westbrook answered. Revisiting the Miracle at Michigan takes me back to my childhood in such a way that I can see every detail of where I was when I saw it, the weather outside, and feel the reaction a young and not-yet jaded me had.
Growing older and taking on life’s responsibilities can chip away at a person’s youthful exuberance, as can the lifting of the veil of naivety childhood provides us.
My love affair with college football began in the era of The Program (RIP James Caan), of Sports Illustrated calling for the shuttering of the Miami football program, of the Bowl Alliance paving the way for the BCS and eventually the Playoff (all of which were designed with the same goal of transferring as much power and money to The Haves as possible).
This was also the same era in which Steve Spurrier and Bobby Bowden became the sport’s first million-dollar coaches.
Spurrier and Bowden — head coaches of heated rivals each with national championships won in the ‘90 — signing seven-figure contracts in the same 12-month window wasn’t coincidence, of course, and wasn’t without controversy.
It’s almost quaint in retrospect, especially this week with Dabo Swinney signing an $11 million-a-year contract extension at Clemson. And, yes, that’s the same Dabo Swinney who publicly threatened to leave the sport if the athletes started getting paid.
Such salaries now aren’t so much steeped in controversy as accepted with calloused cynicism. Viewing institutions with a cynical eye is necessary to spot corruption, but it’s when you fail to recognize why an institution deserves saving from corruption in the first place that cynicism begets apathy.
The landscape of the sport being completely redrawn by TV execs? It’s always been that way. (It hasn’t1). Decisions impacting the long-term state of the sport made with a short-sighted push to consolidate as much money as possible? It was always about money. (This is arguably more true than the former point, but it’s certainly become more brazen and the pursuits greedier in recent years, and more at odds with the traditions and history that differentiate the sport from the NFL).
College football culture has become so steeped in such attitudes, even primary Playoff sponsor Dr. Pepper and its Fansville campaign became shockingly nihilistic this season.
A byproduct of this atmosphere is how often college football discourse gets distilled down into two separate but equally…depressing, for lack of a better term, narratives.
One is the Playoff Or Bust mentality that started immediately at the postseason’s outset. Week 1 provided some glaring examples, like the excellent Florida-Utah game.
Anthony Richards’ remarkable performance, Utah marching down the field with a shot to win in the closing seconds, Billy Napier — a coach who started in the profession at HBCU South Carolina State making barely above minimum wage and once fired from his assistant’s post at Clemson — debuting at a history-rich program with a signature win…all background noise to the usual din about conference Playoff placement.
Likewise, once-proud Florida State2 endured a trying half-decade. Perhaps the Seminoles still have a ways to go before returning to ACC title contention. But beating LSU in an ostensible road game, outlasting the Tigers in one of Week 1’s more entertaining games, is at least a step in the right direction. Or at least, it would be, if the All Or Nothing mentality wasn’t so prevalent.
The other cynicism-fueled discourse takes the form in the snarky, mean-spirited memeification of football.
Look, weird things happen in the college game. I get it. Giving up a touchdown because a punt hit an offensive lineman’s backside is entertaining.
But the constant pursuit of something, anything to mock ends up coming off just sorta juvenile. Week 2 provides one of the better examples of the Lord of the Flies nature of the college football internet with the Iowa-Iowa State rivalry.
There have been almost as many games in the series over the past decade in which both teams surpassed 40 points as there have been the both-scoring-under-20 defensive grinds that are commonly associated with the contest.
Nevertheless, each September around this time, it becomes damn-near impossible to avoid seeing the words, “El Assico,” a joke about as dated as Mitt Romney vs. Big Bird memes.
This obsession with mocking the sport oftentimes leaves me wondering if these people actually enjoy college football. Do they follow out of habit? Is it simply a popular and thus relatable medium from which to base comedy?
I have to believe that at one time, anyone who watches college football become hooked not from nitpicking the national championship race nor pulling up the lowest point-total in the Sunday newspaper’s box score to loudly guffaw, but because the sport is fun.
Because something someone who is exponentially more athletic than the most athletic person any of us known in our daily lives wowed us. Because a game, a player, a moment etched itself into our memory forever.
Covering the Villanova-Lehigh game last week for FloFootball, Wildcats quarterback Connor Watkins fired a variety of deep passes that, while the circumstances were much different, traveled about as far through the air as Kordell Stewart’s throw at Michigan.
It was a joy to watch; a genuine joy to watch. No ironic enjoyment, no qualifiers. Just great athletes doing incredible things on the football field.
And there’s joy in watching victory. The heavily circulated own-block came in a game that Arizona — my alma mater, a program that’s enjoyed highs like that aforementioned ‘93 season and lows like…well, most years — won in dominant fashion, 38-20.
The scene from the locker room after the win at San Diego State encapsulated the emotions and characteristics that make college football special: Joyfulness. Camaraderie. Youthful exuberance.
There’s not a damn thing wrong with loving the sport for these qualities. I hope more of us can remember how we became fans initially and recapture that earnest enjoyment.
In this Awful Announcing piece on Byron “Whizzer” White, I examined how the only college football All-American ever to serve on the Supreme Court pushed against open TV contracts specifically for fear that media conglomerates would have undue influence.
The coincidence, if not irony, of this essay circling back to Florida and Florida State isn’t lost on me — nor is the lesson that no dollar figure will ever be enough to insulate a program from periods of unrest; on the contrary, Florida and Florida State’s downturns might be cautionary tales of what happens when monetary investment morphs into unrealistic expectations and pressure.
Really good stuff, Kyle! This sums up a large portion of our greater social media culture, inside college football and out: "But the constant pursuit of something, anything to mock ends up coming off just sorta juvenile."
Really good stuff, Kyle! This sums up a large portion of the greater social media culture, inside college football and out: "But the constant pursuit of something, anything to mock ends up coming off just sorta juvenile."