College Football is almost bigger than the NFL.
It draws massive crowds and TV audiences. The game is different, it tends to be more run oriented, you get more crazy plays.
The issue with it is that the ranking system is messy and just one loss can knock you out of contention for the championship.
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I just tried to scan the rankings to see where all the teams I might care about (or ones I have a link to such as friends colleges, or colleges through which I have done some study/short courses), and I can’t make head nor tail of the conferences. The names are all familiarise, but what does it all mean!!
You do.
College football is insane.
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There’s a dozen or more conferences and on top of that the top 25 are ranked after every weekend of matches.
Only the top four get into the championship playoffs.
And then you have all the bowl games. These are all played at the end of the season. Only the best teams qualify for these, but who plays where is anybody’s guess!
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You call Debbie Does Dallas bullshit? Harsh words, indeed!
But I can’t stand the Cowboys either….or any of the NFC East teams. Giants or Washington anyway.
Gridiron is really annoying in person when it’s being televised. So many random stoppages.
I can attest that Big Red football was fun to attend. Ground holds >25,000, town has 30,000 people and ~30,000 students (but only 20,000 of them are at Cornell).
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I was on business in Madison Wisconsin about 15 years ago and went with work colleagues to the first game of the season, University of Wisconsin, the Badgers were playing Notre Dame.
I was surprised when I was told to be ready at 8 am to be picked up, as the game started at 3 pm. So by about 8:30 am, I was in the car park having my first beer while the BBQ was being set up. We had a large keg in the back of a pickup and we were just one group of hundreds.
Cannot remember much about the game, except the crowd was massive with this College Stadium holding nearly 85,000. Have been to other College games since in Texas and they are just as huge. Better game to watch, less stoppages than NFL though the TV coverage is also huge.
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Insane.
This was today, I think.
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If you spend your childhood in Nebraska, like I did, you get attached to the local college team. It’s the only game in town. Even though they’ve been down for 20 years after decades of success (sound familiar?), they’re still getting 80k through the gates. Some of that is because there’s not a whole lot else to do, but it’s also got a pro sports feel to it even if it technically isn’t. But if you don’t have an NFL team near you, then you latch on to it; it’s a natural instinct. In those days you used to be able to get closer to players, though not so much these days.
I suppose the closest comparisons here I could think of are perhaps the VFA or TAC cup in terms of standard (feeder competition for the big league drafts) and perhaps like a country footy comp for tribal / loyal feelings.
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Nationally televised games are worse. Bowls and playoffs are worse yet. A gridiron game that ends in regulation should never take four hours. I blame ESPN for a lot of that.
Packers maybe… although lately we are more like Port or Brisbane… we always trip over our ■■■■■ in the penultimate week.
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The AFL could only dream that its 2nd tier/feeder competition was as big as college football.
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Ummm…first tier?
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It’s interesting that the sort of pregame carnival atmosphere for College Football is something we don’t seem to be interested in here.
I have no idea why.
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Possibly the difference in strength between American beer and our beer.
We’d have the whole crowd maggoted 3 hours before the games.
MCG is the only ground with a big enough car park too, and that’d be too compromised by people, you know, wanting to park there.
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Yeah, I don’t mean tailgating.
Lol, and I don’t mean Meatloaf.
And while this is undeniably cool, I don’t mean this either.
…■■■■■■■ college football is insane…
No, I mean the thing like the walk to the ‘G.
We could totally do that.
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Back in the day, when the Bombers played at the G. we would get there early, fire up the Barbie and drink ourselves in oblivion. Many doing the same without any interference from Police or Parks people.
But then we grew up, or rather had Wives who controlled our lives and poor behaviours.
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I think the lack of truly “home” stadiums (other than Geelong*) probably also hurts the creation of these sorts of traditions. NFL and College are nearly all one-team towns (I think the two LA teams are the only shared-stadium set up in the NFL - but that is a brand new stadium anyway). I think these sort of things grow over time, or are spontaneous reactions to an event like Merv’s aerobics at the MCG. When they are pushed by a marketing department they are never anywhere near as successful or well embraced (flash-mob, anyone?). I like how we have the air raid siren, but it’s never really been a thing that people would miss if it wasn’t there.
And on a seperate note, I was a bit surprised they still do that at FSU given the current sentiments about Native American culture appropriation. I looked it up on Wiki and it says the Seminoles resisted government efforts to be relocated out of Florida, and the use of the name and images is sanctioned by the Seminole Tribe. The Seminole logo is actually a representation of a famous Seminole war leader. Good to see it is seen as a recognition/celebration of the culture, as opposed to the Redskins/Indians (Chief Wahoo) stuff that never had that level of co-operation.
Edit: *I obviously didn’t even consider Brisbane, GC, GWS or the bin-chickens because frankly, why would you?
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