College Football Sturs Excitement

Almost every avid sports fan can remember a story or two about sitting around a television on an autumn afternoon watching college football with their family and friends. Well, it’s time to add a story or two to your memories because college football season has finally begun.

As legendary announcer Curt Gowdy would put it, weeks of training camp will finally pay off in either, “the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.”

As another season starts, many questions arise from all corners of the country.

Can Ohio State repeat? Will the University of Miami rebound from a heartbreaking loss in last year’s national championship game? Does 73-year-old Bobby Bowden have another top-four ranking or four-loss season ahead of him? How are players at the Universities of Alabama and Washington going to accept the new coaching changes made after the closing of spring practice?

All of those questions are what make college football the greatest American sport, no questions asked. Only in college football does Northern Illinois beat the heavily favored and No. 15 Maryland 20-13 in each team’s season opener.

No other sport could pack stadiums from cities with big metropolitan areas like Seattle, Los Angeles, and Atlanta to such locales as Gainesville, Florida; Manhattan, Kansas; and Norman, Oklahoma.

Nothing else in sports compares to the pressure of having to win every game of the season just to have the right of to play for the title. College football is the only collegiate sport that matches the two best teams in the country to determine the national champion. No other collegiate sport can measure up to the drama of a must-win game against a non-conference opponent in the first month of the season.

College football is one of those things that can untie families, rekindle friendships, and give people a good reason to shout at their television and one another all in good fun.

In America, there is nothing like watching the leaves change and watching Keith Jackson cover college football like no one else can. There is nothing like the excitement of running around like a chicken with its head cut off after watching memorable games with memorable names like “Wide Right I, II, and III”, “The Game of the Century” and “The Miracle at Michigan.”

Only college football provides excitement like that.

Will Brown, 18, is a sophomore broadcast journalism student from Rockledge. He can be reached at willbitsgood48@aol.com