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How's that for some alliteration? Or should I say, "obliteration?" I am now going to write on a topic I know virtually nothing about: college football. Though it's probably invisible to those who live well outside of the heart of flyover country, a major athletic conference here is currently imploding at the behest of powerful and greedy folks all over these United States.
And in its wake, this implosion will leave local and regional economies in tatters and major university brands tarnished. Wait, institutions of higher learning have brands? You bet they do in this day and age. And in this day and age, it’s dawning on me how so very far we have not come.
Believe me when I say I am an outsider to the discussion of league loyalty and the revenue-generating behemoth that is now college football. I still don’t get the game and don’t even care that I don’t get it. No one ever wants to sit next to me at a game because I ask a lot of questions. And just when I think I’m starting to get the hang of it, some bizarre play goes down, evoking an obscure rule which is then trotted out as evidence that something quite complex is going on down there in the gladiator pit where people are pushing and shoving and grabbing each other.
Tennis is my true love, if you must know, but I like lots of other sports as well: volleyball, swimming, skiing, track. Basically, the kind of strategy-based athletic engagements where nobody hurts anyone else except through the accrual of points and where there is some personal best at stake in the competition.
For purposes of full disclosure, I will confess that my husband and I met at an MU-Texas gridiron dust-up 32 years ago, when the two colleges were tossed together as a non-conference event back when Mizzou was a member of the collection of Midwestern colleges known as the Big Eight. I don't even remember who won because, well, I might have had my mind on something other than the game. Like, I don't know, a handsome, dark-haired, newly-minted Missouri grad who was working at the game. I do know, however, the Tigers vs. Longhorns game on September 29, 1979, drew the biggest crowd ever recorded at Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri.
And it was definitely recorded---by my future husband, who, as a University employee and rookie in its police academy, hung out of the open door of a Missouri Highway Patrol helicopter as it circled on its side around the stadium, shooting photos of that packed venue that were used by the university in postcards and posters for the next 15-20 years. Be still, my heart.
Football Fever by timsamoff via Flickr
And, of course, I’ve had great fun throughout my life as a spectator at football games. The best parts for me were the social contexts in which these games were mired. The Friday night lights of games at the local all-boys Jesuit high school my brothers attended where girls would flock to see and be seen and the mixers that followed the games. The fabulous tailgate spreads provided by my dear friend Linda’s parents on football Saturdays during my college years. And even the handful of games each subsequent year my husband and I have attended with friends on crisp October Saturdays.
As Irish Catholics and with a Jesuit Notre Dame grad in the family, my parents were avid supporters of Notre Dame. My dad tracked their seasons and watched all of their games and my mom and her friends cooked up casseroles and sundry hors d'oevres for local alumni fundraisers. They even had an enormous set of china (known as "the Notre Dame plates") they hauled around for these frequent gatherings, which perfectly integrated several areas of their lives: religion, football, and socializing.
My parents and a group of their friends also religiously followed the Kansas City Chiefs in their heyday and the early days of the Super Bowl. They sipped thermoses of hot chocolate spiked with vodka to keep themselves warm on bitter cold Sunday afternoons in December on the bleachers of the old Municipal Stadium. So even though I was hardly the greatest fan, football was a constant in the sports background of my life.
A highlight of each collegiate football season culminated in the game between two old rivals, MU and KU. I am one of the select few who attended both schools, so I’ve always been somewhat bemused by the contest called the Border War. The state line divides this metropolitan area roughly in half, and team loyalties with it.
