Last night, I sat down to watch my beloved Indiana Hoosiers face off against Georgia Tech on ESPN in their contrived Big Ten/ACC Challenge, a game that the Hoosiers would go on to win in unspectacular fashion. While I love college basketball as much as any Hoosier possibly could, I just couldn’t really get into the roundball with so much happening on the gridiron. It appears, Bottom Line readers, that I have become indoctrinated into the southern world where college football reigns supreme and the rest of the year in sports pales in comparison.

Case in point, Sunday, I sat down on my couch after watching some football on Thanksgiving and a couple of games on Saturday (namely Auburn/Alabama, which we watched at my girlfriend’s insistence, much to my shock and delight) and I checked the games I was getting. And didn’t watch a minute of football on Sunday apart from the Eagles/Patriots game later that night. Simply put, I am a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles (and to some extent the Indianapolis Colts) but I am not a fan of the NFL as a whole. I am a fan of the Indiana Hoosiers but I am very much a fan of college football.

Frankly, college football is a better product than anything else in sports. Nowhere else do you have the tradition, the rivalry and the week-to-week excitement that college football possesses. The NFL (and its TERRIBLE television network) ought to be really careful that it doesn’t further alienate and borderline annoy the people that love their product so. Fortunately for the NFL, it still owns the largest market in the world — New York City and other northeast cities — where college football has yet to find a home.

I have to admit that when I moved to the South and saw the borderline fanatism with which people cared about college football, I didn’t get it. I mean I loved college football as much as the next guy but what was the big deal? Well, I get it now. And this weekend is a can’t miss in college football. Boston College/Virginia Tech. Missouri/Oklahoma. LSU/Tennessee and the announcement of the final BCS standings. My couch is going to have permanent indentations.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.