Observations from a college football Saturday

On Saturday the last games of week 14 of the college football season were played, capping off the slate affectionately referred to as Rivalry Week. Needless to say, I watched a lot of college football this past Saturday. There is a certain pageantry to the college game that separates it from its professional counterpart. The ever-changing uniform designs, the student sections and the noticeably young-looking athletes give the game its uniquely collegiate feel. However, the more that I watch college football, the more its weird ticks and incongruences become apparent.

The first question that came to mind after a day of college football viewing was, “Do all coaches actually have the same haircut?” The answer to that is yes. They also all have brand new $140 white Nike quarter-zip windbreakers and visors. The cult of personality around the best college coaches is undeniable, and nobody embodies that more than Alabama coach Nick Saban. Nick Saban is one of the highest paid coaches in the United States, pulling in a cool $6.9 million as college-educated twenty-somethings across the country find themselves saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Saban is probably worth that money. His ability to recruit is unmatched, and the Alabama football program has been incredibly successful during his tenure. At the end of the day, though, it just seems odd that these giant sports programs are associated with educational institutions. They serve entirely different purposes, and the marriage of the two will continue to be uneasy at best.

Another takeaway from Saturday is how sometimes college football can bring out the worst in all of us. Take, for example, the state of Oregon. Ever since becoming the 33rd state in our wonderful nation, Oregon has done a good job of being a generally progressive and easy going state. That is why it came as such a surprise to me yesterday when I saw that Oregon refers to its intrastate college football rivalry game, University of Oregon versus Oregon State University, as the “Civil War.” Now I know that having some pre-packaged name for a specific event makes journalism easier; ESPN liberally used the phrase “Iron Bowl” in all its billings last week to hype up the annual matchup between University of Alabama and Auburn University, which has long gone by that name. But does no one realize the near-dystopian level of chauvinism present in referring to a football game between two college teams as a civil war? How did not one person recognize that it is neither funny nor clever to name a college football game after high-intensity, large scale conflicts between same-state actors? It was hard to watch Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota’s Heisman solidifying performance without shaking my head every time the announcers discussed each schools recent performance in the “Civil War.”

Growing up in the northeast has caused college football to be a somewhat unknown entity for much of my life. I know that a good portion of the United States is crazy about it, and as a dedicated NFL fan who wants an early look at emerging football talent I’ve found myself watching more college football this year than I ever have before. With that being said, I still am getting used to the idea of the head football coach being by far the highest paid position at a given university, and I’ll be damned the day that “Civil War” makes me think of a college football game.