are you ready for some football????

in a little over 21 hours the college football season kicks off on espn. i can't wait. i love football. my favorite will always be baseball, but i love football games. so much energy and excitement, especially at the college level. my tigers play saturday and we are on tv, so i will be watching that.

the thing about college football is the energy radiates through the stadium. the traditions for each school vary, but the energy is the same. excitement from the players and the fans is outrageous. you could be at the shoe(ohio st) or one of 100,000+ at the big house(university of michigan) and the energy you would feel would be like nothing else. maybe it's because the boys are playing for pride, not a big paycheck, although for a few that will come soon enough. for those that know they will never make it to the nfl, they play with everything they have and you can see it. with every tackle, every touchdown, you can see the excitement they have in their eyes. they are living their dream. the dream to play before 100,000+ screaming fans. that doesn't happen in the nfl. the redskins can hold 80,000, but when was the last time they sold out 80,000? besides the excitement at an nfl stadium is not the excitement at a college stadium. college kids love saturdays for many reasons. one being football.

the only bad thing about college football is the bcs. whoever came up with that is not a football fan. figure out a true playoff system so there is a true champion. boise state deserved it last year, but because they didn't have the rankings for difficulty of schedule or something equally as dumb they didn't get it. i don't care how "difficult" a schedule is, you still have to go out and play 60 minutes of football and end up with more points than the other guy. you still have to stop their offense and hope their defense is sleeping when you are on the field. you still have to get a number in the w column, not the l column. boise state came out and fought like crazy against oklahoma to get a win in overtime in the fiesta bowl. oklahoma is from a major conference and according to the bcs should have beat boise state. it didn't happen that way. boise state was the only team to go undefeated and didn't even get a share of the champion title. nope they finished 4th. they won in my opinion the best bowl game of the year and did it with style and a little bit of luck. who can forget the statue of liberty play, that they pulled off with perfection. and then they added a little romance when ian johnson got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend(now wife) on national tv.

of course it's easy to sit here and come up with what seem to be better ideas, i don't have to actually plan the thing. i'm sure they are working on something better and when they do i know there will still be people complaining about it. college football fans are fierce and loyal fans. it takes a lot to get a person to change his loyalty. it's not like we follow a favorite player, they leave in 4 years or less anyway. we are loyal to the school and in turn the team. regardless of the system, we will be watching, just as we did before the bcs. and this weekend all across america people won't be out enjoying the unofficial end to summer, they will be celebrating the unofficial beginning of fall with the college game day crew at virginia tech and then glued to the tv the rest of the day. they will be watching regardless of who's playing because in the end it just might count for your team.