I hated college football last season. It's a realization I came to about halfway through the season, even if I was reluctant to admit it to myself or anybody around me. Hell, I'm still semi-reluctant to admit it here now, where anybody can read it and discover what feels like a guilty secret. The entire season was a joyless, soulless march toward a conclusion in which it didn't feel like anything that makes the sport wonderful mattered. It was a series of contracts that needed to be met and bills that had to be paid. Everything was an argument or a political statement.
It was awful.
Particularly for somebody like myself, who has a genuine love and passion for everything about the game. I cover this sport for a living, and while it's cliché to say "do what you love for a living and you'll never work a day in your life," it's cliché for a reason; it's mostly true (it does feel like work sometimes, just like raising children feels like work sometimes). I took a different path to the sport than most. I grew up in a major city with professional sports teams, without any specific loyalty to a school. Chicago is a blend of nearly the entire Big Ten, Notre Dame and schools from across the country. Neither of my parents went to college, so I didn't have an organic pathway to any program. Instead, I discovered the game by coming home from church on Saturdays and flipping on the little television in my room. It was there that the voice of Keith Jackson taught me about a different version of football than I was used to seeing. A version with pageantry and passion that felt far more genuine than the NFL.
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I didn't fall in love with a team; I fell in love with the game as a whole. It was players and personalities, mascots and chants, rainbow-colored foliage and sun-soaked grass.
The best way to describe what the sport means to me is to describe the first day of the 2016 season. It was September 1, 2016, and it wasn't just the first day of a new season. It was also the day my mom died.
She'd been sick for a while, and I had spent the previous month driving back-and-forth from my home in the city to her hospital room in the suburbs. It was the worst time of my life, and eventually, when we all knew there was no coming back, we had to let her go. That day, after spending time with my family, I made the drive home one last time. When I got there, I was in a zombie-like state. I had no idea what to do with myself, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I went downstairs to my office and turned a college football game on. It was South Carolina and Vanderbilt. I didn't watch it for work. Nobody at work expected anything of me that day or that entire week. I watched it because I needed it. I needed the game that had brought me so much joy throughout my life to bring me more of it at a time when I'd never needed it more.
I can't say that it did -- it was a game between South Carolina and Vanderbilt after all -- but it provided comfort. I spent that evening watching that game, Tennessee nearly avoiding a disastrous loss to Appalachian State in overtime and a fun game between Minnesota and Oregon State. I remember them all vividly because my brain soaked up everything it saw in an effort to help stem the tears rolling down my cheeks the entire time I watched. As many hours as I'd spent of my life watching college football up until that point, it was the first time I cried while doing so.
This past weekend was the second. However, it was the first time I'd ever cried while listening to a Metallica song. When "Enter Sandman" kicked in Friday night before Virginia Tech's 17-10 upset of No. 10 North Carolina, I felt the energy from 65,000 people in Lane Stadium leave my television and enter my body. It was a feeling that continued throughout the weekend, with atmospheres across the country bringing joy back into my college football heart.
I hated last season, but I'm already madly in love with this one.
Stock Advice of the Week
BUY: Florida State. The Seminoles lost to No. 9 Notre Dame 41-38 in overtime Sunday night, but this was a moral victory if I've ever seen one. The Noles fought hard in the first half and stuck around, but things unraveled in the third quarter. The Fighting Irish quickly turned a 20-17 Florida State lead into a 38-20 Notre Dame lead in an eight-minute span of game time. In recent years, Florida State would've quit right then and there, and it would've finished as a blowout loss that left everybody questioning where the season was going.
This Florida State team fought back and forced overtime. On a weekend that saw all three of the ACC's ranked teams lose, Florida State showed signs of a resurgence that both it and the conference desperately need.
SELL: Indiana. I was a villain to Indiana fans last season for pointing out that while the Hoosiers were a good team, they were also the beneficiaries of some luck. I became a bigger villain over the offseason when I warned that 2021 wasn't likely to be as fun as 2020 had been in Hoosierland.
Well, No. 17 Indiana opened the season with a 34-6 blowout loss on the road against No. 18 Iowa. Quarterback Michael Penix threw two pick-sixes, and the Hoosiers turned the ball over three times in total. Indiana is the only Big Ten East team to lose this weekend, and everybody else -- even Rutgers -- looked more impressive, and I don't just mean because the names on their uniforms were spelled correctly.
YOLO Moment of the Week
Listen, LSU quarterback Max Johnson knows this was a terrible idea, and he doesn't need his coaches to tell him that, even though we know they will. That said, I understand why he did it. I mean, can you imagine if that pass attempt had been completed? It would've been an all-time play. So the lesson we must learn from this is the same one as always: never do something really stupid, unless it might work, because that would be cool.
Rough Look of the Week
UConn lost to FCS Holy Cross 38-28 to fall to 0-2 on the season after getting blasted 45-0 by Fresno State in Week 0, and on Sunday coach Randy Edsall announced he would retire at the end of the season. I can't help but wonder if the decision to retire came to mind immediately after seeing his players respond like this on the sideline.
I've made a habit of asking at least one program per season in The Monday After to seriously consider running the option. I'm doing that again here now with you, UConn. I don't know who you're going to replace Edsall with, nor do I know how desirable your job will be to candidates considering the uncertain future of your program. Please, for yourself and others, strongly consider hiring a coach who will run the option. Your football program has no identity. Give it one.
Jump Around Performance of the Week
Strictly for the vibes.
College Football Playoff Projection of the Week
Until the next Monday After!
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