I love college football. From opening weekend to the bowl season it provides me with a constant distraction from my otherwise mundane and pointless existence. From the wall to wall major conference games on Saturday to the MAC and other mid major games that checker the weeknights, if college football is on I will probably watch it.  Unfortunately with the coming of the college football season comes the army of college football fans who are the bane of my existence. They show up on the internet message boards, at the bars I frequent and even in my own family. They are the semi-informed fan, whose conversational knowledge of college football begins and ends with College Football Live. They know a few memes about your conference, your coach, and college football in general and will generally ruin your football experience should you have to sit near them or run into them in a message board environment.

You know what the worst part is, you might actually agree with them . But in what I would call the Barbra Streisand effect, your opinion automatically seems less correct because an idiot or an ass agrees with it. It is a fact of life in college football, and we just have to live with it So without further ado I give you a piece of writing of which even Mitch Albom could be proud, The Three People You Meet in Football Hell

 

1. The Unreasonable SEC Supremacist.  You had to know this was coming right? I read a lot of college football blogs, run by and dedicated to fans of SEC schools. They are overwhelmingly intelligent, well researched and reasonable. Qualities that all stand in stark context to many fans from the internet. Some of whom may believe that

A. Ohio State would finish behind Vanderbilt in the SEC East
B. The winner of the SEC should automatically play in the BCS national championship game
C. That the SEC plays the game at a speed that even USC and Texas can't compete with.

Look, you will get no argument from me about the SEC being the best Conference in football, you will not however be able to convince me why this actually matters. It is true that as a conference the SEC has 4 NC's this decade, and produces the most NFL talent, but why is it should teams like South Carolina, Miss St or Kentucky take so much pride in how well LSU and Florida have done these past 10 years. Why take pride in getting pounded by really good teams, when you still end up sucking at the end of the year again. Do not of course tell that to the fans of Tennessee or Auburn who generally stunk things up last year, because so long as the Gators pound another Big Ten team in the BCS its all good below the Mason Dixon. You know before getting drawn into this who ESS EEE SEEE speed thing got started I hated the rest of my Conference. Why the hell should I root for Michigan or Ohio St in the bowl games? I know they are crap in January! You may be an SEC fan yourself, sitting there reading this and thinking. "Oh God here we go again" all because I am starting to sound a little too much like.

2. The Pathetic Big Ten Apologist. I'll admit it, I have made my share of excuses over the years. I have participated in arguments where I will grasp for any reason that will somehow justify how  abysmal the Big Ten has been in BCS games over the last few years.  But I am tired of trying to defend Ohio State (a team I don't even like!)  after it blows it again and again in January. There are many however that think that recent Big Ten football failures are due to something much more complex than bad coaching, conditioning or inferior talent. It must of course be something like:

A. THE BIG TEN PLAYS IN COLD WEATHER! LETS SEE SOME SOUTHERN SCHOOL COME UP HERE AND PLAY IN THE SNOW! THEN WE WILL SEE WHAT IS UP! (never mind the fact that most years the Big Ten is done with its season by Thanksgiving, not quite frigid weather.)

B. ITS OUR AMAZING ACADEMICS, YOU DUMB SOUTHERNERS WILL LET ANY DUMMY PLAY FOR YOU. WE HAVE TO RECRUIT STUDENT ATHLETES WITH REAL INTELLECT. YOU DON'T BLAME HARVARD FOR NOT WINNING BCS GAMES ANYMORE! (I know for a fact that the standards for an athlete in Big Ten schools are lowered compared to the normal undergrad, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me that Big Ten Schools will only recruit slightly less dumb players because they have a reputation to uphold. Northwestern excluded of course.The really good football schools in the Big Ten don't exactly have 100% graduation rates.)

I refuse to participate in this sort of rationalization this year, the media may be coming down hard maybe somewhat unfairly on the Big Ten. But until we start winning BCS games again, we are just going to have to take it.

3. Mr. NFL who happens to watch a college game. Whats a spread offense? What the hell kind of team runs the option? You mean to tell me you don't have a play off? When you come from the land of the NFL, where everyone runs basically the same offense, where teams who lose 4 games routinely win championships and teams play for 17 weeks, before the playoffs, you might miss the point of what makes college football so great. I know the BCS is confusing, broken and most of the time sets up a lousy championship game, but goddamn it, its the best we've got. College Football Saturdays will always be better than NFL Sundays, and most of the reasons why lie in its flaws.

 

I know these three people are out there. I know at our weakest moments we can become them. I just hope not to run into too many of them this fall.