Listen, I love college sports. Perhaps a bit too much if we’re being honest, but there is something different about them. Even with the amount of money that is now involved in all aspects of it, the purity of it is still significantly greater than the pros.
We saw the NFL’s longest running rivalry this past Sunday night between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers and what was the entire rivalry talk of the telecast? Things that happened before I was even born. Sure, it doesn’t help that the series has been one-sided for the last 30 years, but rivalries in the NFL feel like such a flash in the pan compared to what they are in college.
Or at least what they’re supposed to be like.
On the many drives I’ve made down the Indiana Toll Road, I stopped at “The Knute” (aptly named gas station/fast food rest stop roughly 30 miles outside South Bend) before a Notre Dame–Michigan game in 2008. The first person I saw when I got out of my car wasn’t wearing blue and gold or maize and blue, but instead an Appalachian State shirt.
Being a lifelong Domer I thought it was hilarious gave the guy a fist-pound.
I’ve seen what feel like a million college football themed shirts there and on college campuses over the years that have nothing to do with one’s own team as much as they do ripping a rival in an entirely harmless matter.
NEXT: Why I loved what UNC’s quarterback said this week