The college football season kicks off this week, and I’m stoked to cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame, my beloved alma mater. And more importantly, for myself.
That’s right, this season, and every season, I’m really cheering for me. Because more than any other sport, college football is a proxy for our self-worth. If you fail to grasp that, you’ll never understand why every autumn college football fans across the country sacrifice their hard-earned Saturday afternoons to a game played by kids who can’t buy a raspberry White Claw at 7-11.
I admit, it’s not an easy concept to wrap your head around — maybe an example will help.
Consider Jeremiyah Love, Notre Dame’s first-team All-America running back. He’s 6 feet and 214 pounds of marble. He hurdles dudes. I go about 5’8, 150, and I’m still sore from mowing the lawn last week. On the surface, not a lot of similarities.
But when Love bursts through the line of scrimmage, bowls over would-be tacklers, and dives for the pile-on from 8 feet out, he’s not Jeremiyah Love anymore. For a brief, transcendent moment, he’s me, and I’m him. Because we are both Notre Dame.
Or take head coach Marcus Freeman. He’s half-Asian and Catholic — me too. He has a large family — me too. If he wins big, I win big. Because I am Marcus Freeman. I want Jeremiyah Love, Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame to succeed for me.
Is all this starting to click now?
Cranking the zaniness factor way up is the fact that college football is largely fueled by a bunch of aged-and-crazed alumni reliving their glory days from the living room couch amid the crushing reality of bills, mortgages and decidedly un-fun real-world obligations. It’s not a sport; it’s an escape. We need this.
We’re looking over our shoulders, insecure about our careers, life choices, even our hobbies. We are grasping for meaning and validation in a dizzying world spun ever faster by AI, soaring prices and unprecedented technological disruption. Did we choose the right path in life? What does it all mean? And what’s for dinner tonight? Better not be chicken again.
When all of those annoying questions can be silenced by a Bud Light and a fourth-quarter comeback against Syracuse, you bet your bacon there’s going to be a captive audience. It’s a beautiful thing, college football.
When it comes to rivalry games, chuck all reason out the window. I mean all of it. This is about machismo and vague notions of pride, legacy and glory; it’s 200% animal spirits. Consider the sorry Ohio State Buckeyes, still reeling from last year’s national championship. That’s right, I said reeling — because they lost to Michigan. Terrible season. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said that other than the death of his father, losing to Michigan is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to him. Ryan Day is an idiot.
And that brings us to the great paradox of college football: There is so, so, so little and yet so, so, so much at stake. None of these games matter in the least. But deluding yourself into thinking they do is half the fun of college football. The other half, of course, is sending your friends text messages that their school sucks.
With our identity and very self-worth tied directly to the performance of our teams, for college football fans, and especially alumni, every gameday is a potential midlife crisis. Isn’t it wonderful?
It all kicks off this week. Go Irish. Go me.
Zach Przystup (zprzystup@gmail.com) works for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs and writes about parenting and family life.
