'Tis the Season

And so it begins.

Last night the first college football games of the season were played around the country. Years of hard work paid off for many young men who played for the first time on the collegiate stage, and for many fans, the sounds, sights, and smells of the season has begun to enchant their lives for yet another year of pageantry.

We love football in this country. It seems we always have. We have found ways to love football that we once might have either deemed impossible or we might have laughed at for their insignificance. We once packed the stadiums around our fair nation, rooted for our beloved teams, screamed our heads off, and then left the games, only to hope for victory in the next week, or in the next season. Players worked construction in the summer, and hoped for jobs in medicine, law, business, education, and the like after graduation.

Things are a bit different now. We have 4 channels of one TV network following every facet of college football from quarterback play to the dietary habits of the defensive linemen, year-round. We follow the twitter accounts of pre-adolescent “phenoms” making college commitments that are, for them, half a lifetime away. Players and coaches are now suggesting that players should be paid.

I don’t mean to intimate that the evolutions in the game are cheap or bad in some way. Although I cannot seem to escape them, and in some small way I pine for a simpler sport, I admit I love being able to read the latest buzz on Notre Dame Football, whether it is in the heart of autumn or in middle of spring. The one thing I do warn against is that it is hard to remove one aspect of the college football experience from another: good or bad. As we build up college football into a powerful “industry,” we run into the same kinds of problems that we encounter with other powers: corruption, greed, and sometimes scandal. Why was a guy like Jerry Sandusky seen as “untouchable” by so many people? OUR love and patronage (bordering on obsession) gave him that influence.

So as we begin this new season of a brilliant, beautiful sport, let’s remind ourselves of the same things we remind our kids of as we drive home from a soccer game: it is just a game. Just because we have followed some recruits since they were still learning state capitals doesn’t make them grown men, equipped to take on aggressive criticism from gridiron pundits. Just because they play under the lights doesn’t mean that they don’t still study for philosophy exams or deal with the pain of being away from home. We will be doing the sport a favor by keeping it in perspective, so as to avoid the trappings of any being that allows power and influence overtake it.

Don’t get me wrong. There can be a happy medium where we can get excited by watching a YouTube video of an 8-year-old express his intent to play for the Fighting Irish, and still maintain a proper level of reality in college football, but begins and ends with US, the fans.