College Football

I love to watch college football. However, I would not say I am a fanatic since I don’t tailgate, I don’t display banners all over my car, and I don’t actually attend live games at the stadium. No, my preference is to watch it on TV where I have the best seat in the house. And we are certainly in the thick of the season, the exciting time when a successful season can turn on a single play or a single call.

I haven’t always watched college football, I guess partly because I haven’t always had the time. In high school, I was much more interested in watching NFL football and although I don’t know how it got started, I was a big fan of the Miami Dolphins in the 1970s—the hey days of Bob Griese, Jim Kiick, and Larry Csonka.

When I started college, this was my chance to really turn to college football. But since I was a chemistry major and worked part-time, I often didn’t have time to watch or attend games. And it wasn’t like I went to a football powerhouse school. I attended a small liberal arts college. They did have a football team but it was small time. What can you expect from a team with this pep band?

After I got married and had kids, I didn’t have time to watch college football either. Saturdays, the big college football day were often dedicated to taking care of chores—yard work, house repairs, and redecorating/renovating projects—or other kids’ activities like sports or scouts.

When I really had the time and got interested in watching college football was when our oldest son went away to college. He went to a school that had a big time football program with some big time rivalries. In addition to having a common school to cheer for, my son and I had the opportunity to converse about how the team was doing or what big game was coming up. But unfortunately in the four years he was there, I only made it down for one game. It is probably just as well as my wife who went along to the game, took a book to read during the game, as she wasn’t interested in actually watching the game.

Over the years that my kids have attended other colleges and universities, I have had a chance to add additional schools to ones I cheer for. So on any given Saturday, I’m checking out to see whom those three big time schools are playing. And I have added a few more schools that I never attended but that hold some significance for me like the school from my birth state or the school my brother attended.

Today, a fine Saturday for me starts about noon set up at a table with the TV on and goes until 10 PM. I like to multi-task during this time because while I love college football, I hate all of the commercial breaks. And with just 60 minutes of actual game clock time, a lot of which is used for huddling and setting up plays, there isn’t much to actually watch over the typical 2.5 to 3 hours required for a game. So multi-tasking gives me something to do during these down times. And I feel less guilty about spending an entire day in front of the TV when I have accomplished other things as well. But the amount of “productive” multi-tasking I actually accomplish has sometimes been limited since I have been known to switch back and forth between two different games on the TV while having a third game playing on my iPad.

I still plan to clean out this closet, a task I planned to do while watching college football several weeks ago before I ran across a box of old photos. Maybe I can get a good start on cleaning the closet at halftime during the next game I’m watching—that is unless there’s another good game to flip over to…