College Football
Kickoff
One of the more discouraging aspects of being a fan of college football at this particular moment is the implicit understanding that the sport no longer prioritizes you. The more you love this sport, the less you matter.
The person college football is catering to right now, their ideal customer, is not the lifelong fan who has had the same tailgate spot for decades, or obsesses over their ideal quad box for their Saturday television viewing: It’s basically a guy who is only half paying attention, in, like, New Jersey, or Arizona maybe, halfheartedly glancing at his phone, maybe thinking about making a bet, a guy who doesn’t particularly care that much about college football but does recognize the name “Michigan” or “Georgia” or “Notre Dame” and thinks, “OK, maybe I’ll watch that game. That’s A Big Game.”
You and I — the tailgaters, the season ticket holders, the podcast listeners, the obsessives, the beautiful lunatics of the message boards — are not needed for growth, the sole, desperate motivation of the television executives who run the sport in this age. We are a given. This, I want to be clear, makes us awesome. You, like me, pay to read about college football. You are a beautiful unicorn: You are the lifeblood of this sport. (You are the reason any of this exists. Don’t allow them to make you forget it.)
