Security Blanket
By Kyle Kensing
Disappointing news reported today is ESPN College Gameday will kickoff its 2011 slate from the least college campus-like atmosphere imaginable. Jerry World is the site of Week 1’s premiere match-up, LSU vs. Oregon, and as such is the primetime broadcast. Typically, Gameday emanates from the primetime game’s venue, but seemingly lost on the producers making such decisions is that for us college football fanatics, Gameday is less about quality of game and more about atmosphere.
Week 1 is typically a cupcake buffet, with a majority of BCS conference programs getting in warm-up games to pad their records and gain experience. But there are gems being played on college campuses: 10-win Tulsa travels to likely pre-season No. 1 Oklahoma, and Sooner Country embodies college football. BYU begins its independence with a trip to SEC territory and Ole Miss’ Grove. Everyone loves the underdog, and what underdog is more recently famous than Appalachian State, which opens at Virginia Tech? All are fitting locales, but lost out to the corporate, antiseptic veneer.
Now, dedicating consternation and the time to opine on this is silly on its surface. But Gameday at Jerry World is indicative of a greater movement. The college game is undergoing an “NFL-ization,” or the gradual influence of the pro game’s popularity onto how the FBS game is both presented and played. The movement’s accelerating, and should the ongoing lockout spill into late summer, will Go To Plaid.
Don’t misconstrue my concern as dislike for the NFL. I immerse myself in fantasy leagues and spend my Sundays parked on a couch or on a barstool taking in as much pro action as possible. I just love the college game more, and it’s college football’s imperfections that make it so perfect. I love that it isn’t streamlined. I love that not every player is world class, yet finds ways to compete. I love the overtime format, I love the traditions, I love the atmosphere.
By most accounts, Jerry World is an impressive venue. It’s just not a college venue. The college football addicted love Gameday because it’s reminiscent of Saturdays in college. The backdrop of enthusiastic (and cheap beer-fueled) college students is a throwback to simpler times. Adulthood is about pensions, mortgages, 60-hour work weeks; college is primarily about education, but is also about youthful exuberance.
The NFL and college football are microcosms of those contrasts. So much of what the pro game is built on is…well, professionalism. It’s skyboxes, multi-million dollar contracts, labor negotiations. Look no further than the current lockout for evidence. The product is entertaining, but ultimately it’s about bottom lines. Such attitudes are spilling over more and more. The dollar’s world market value may be weak, but on college gridirons it’s inflating at an exponential rate.
There was a time when playoff support was founded on fairness for all, or an exciting football product, or desire to crown a “true” champion. These arguments have fallen by the wayside for debates over money and government intervention. The opinions of economics professors supercede those of coaches. That’s no defense of the BCS — for lack of a more eloquent term, the BCS sucks. The system currently does more than anything else to corporatize and devalue college football tradition, say nothing of its rampant malfeasance. And that’s no vote of confidence in a playoff, which I have stated many times actually hurts the little guy proponents once claimed it would benefit. These opposite sides of a corporate coin and warring factions fighting their battles in political arenas and bank ledgers is a downer, and leaves traditionalists clinging to what remnants of the game there are like a security blanket.
If hanging onto the true aura of college football means getting worked up over something so frivolous as Gameday’s broadcast location, so be it.