Before we move any further, let's observe a moment of silence for another Philadelphia team that will not win a title. Donovan McNabb is gone for the season and the Eagles are stuck with Jeff Garcia.
(Silence).
The 2006 Philadelphia Eagles - they will be missed. Twenty-three years and counting.
Saturday was a huge day for college football. Ohio State won arguably the biggest regular-season college football game in the past 15 years with their 42-39 victory over Michigan. USC maintained its claim to play for a third national title by shutting down Cal's high-powered offense 23-9 in a primetime fight. And in the feel-good story of the year, Rutgers saw its undefeated season slip away at the hands of unranked Cincinnati, losing 30-11 in Ohio.
But how many Tufts students were watching?
I can't speak for all of the undergraduate population of Tufts University, but from my impressions of the campus, we are not collectively big college football fans. My twin brother goes to USC, so I watched the game at home with my family on Saturday. They were jumping up and down excitedly when Dwayne Jarrett caught the pass that ultimately gave the Trojans the win, clinching a spot in the Rose Bowl. I sat there wondering why I didn't care.
Granted, I haven't cheered or followed a college football team too closely since LaVar Arrington and Courtney Brown left Penn State. The Nittany Lions then went on an awful run up until last season when Michael Robinson, Tamba Hali and Paul Posluszny led the team to an Orange Bowl victory over Florida State.
And I still didn't watch the Lions that closely.
I often wonder if it's because we at Tufts are bad sports fans or we're just not at a football school.
Across town on Saturday, Boston College won a big game over ACC rival Maryland with a 38-16 victory. BC will likely go on to share the ACC title with Wake Forest and could be playing in a Bowl Championship Series game on New Year's Day. Watching the broadcast, it was easy to see that the campus was electric.
Meanwhile, here at Tufts, students were closeted in the library hurriedly getting work done in advance so they could go home on Monday or Tuesday afternoon and skip out on some classes.
Would any of us be thinking at all about Thanksgiving if there was a big Saturday game on campus? Have any of us ever put academics aside because of college sports (that aren't March Madness-related)?
How many of you got excited and anticipated the start of the Tufts basketball season or the home season finale of Tufts football? I don't know about the rest of you, but I haven't seen tangible excitement.
I know there are some purists out there who really enjoy the intimacy and the fun of cheering for Tufts Athletics. It has to be fun to know the athletes out there on the field and be able to cheer them on in an upset win over Williams.
But I had bigger audiences in my high school.
It's getting a little ridiculous by now, having been in college for two and a half years. It's tough to talk to my friend at Penn State and Michigan or listen to my brother at USC and hear about how they have a pre-game tailgate ritual or how they drive across the country to attend games.
It's even worse to sit around watching Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit and seeing all of the college students going crazy in the background. That could be our campus.
You don't even need a big campus to feel football fever. Harvard was by all accounts a circus on Saturday with the annual Harvard-Yale game returning to Cambridge this season. I've had friends tell me that it was an incredible atmosphere.
I guess we're supposed to get excited to see Bates?
Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Maybe I'm just a whiner. I'm really both of those things. But I feel a little like, as Jumbos, we're missing out on a big part of the college experience: athletics. And while I might get vilified by most athletes who will tell me they have some loyal fans, they're only kidding themselves.
It's not easy being an elephant.
