College football can change everything except what makes us fans

There's been a lot of talk lately about how college football isn't what it used to be.

And you know what? It's not.

The conferences don't look the same. The players don't stay as long. The coaches make more money than most of us could spend in three lifetimes. The transfer portal has turned roster management into something resembling professional free agency, and the College Football Playoff keeps growing while the people in charge keep figuring out new ways to squeeze another dollar out of the sport.

Somewhere along the way, college football became a multibillion-dollar business that occasionally remembers to play football on Saturdays, and frankly, I'm tired of hearing about how all of this is ruining the sport.

Not because those complaints aren't legitimate — because many of them are. But because we've allowed the people making these decisions to convince us they somehow control the most important part of college football.

They don't, and they never have.

College football has always belonged to the people who show up

Think about why you became a college football fan in the first place.

Maybe you attended the school. Maybe your parents did. Maybe you grew up 20 minutes from campus and couldn't imagine pulling for anybody else. Maybe you joined in the fandom with a spouse and decided it was now a part of your lives together. 

Or maybe there was no logical explanation at all. You saw a team play when you were eight years old, fell in love with the uniforms or the mascot, and decided right then and there that this was going to be your team, and it has been ever since.

Whatever the reason, you attached yourself to something bigger than a football program. You attached yourself to a school. A community. A set of colors. A mascot. A fight song. A place that feels like home, whether you've ever set foot on campus or not.

Guess what, none of that has changed.

The stadium is still there. The memories are still there. The friendships are still there. The anticipation you feel on Friday night before that Saturday tailgate and kickoff is still there.

That little knot in your stomach when your quarterback drops back on third-and-long? Still there. The absolute joy of beating your biggest rival? Definitely still there. And the crushing disappointment of losing a game you had no business losing? Unfortunately, that's still there, too.

That's college football. Not the television contracts. Not the conference affiliations. Not the size of the playoff bracket. Not the last names on the backs of jerseys. 

It's the feeling, and nobody can take that away from you.

Your Saturday traditions were never about the people getting paid

I’ll give you something else worth remembering. You were always going to be around longer than the players and coaches... always.

The quarterback you idolized as a kid eventually graduated. The coach you thought would stay forever eventually left, retired, or got fired. Your favorite running back played his last game, and somebody else put on his number the following season.

But you kept showing up.

You kept wearing the same colors. You kept making the same drive to campus. You kept meeting the same friends in the same parking lot, arguing about the same things and telling the same stories that everybody had already heard a hundred times.

You kept making that chili recipe you've been making for 25 years. You kept arguing about flats, drumsticks, and boneless wings (for the record, they don’t exist; they’re nuggets). You kept firing up the grill before sunrise for a noon kickoff. You kept putting out the same folding chairs, filling the same coolers, and making sure nobody sat in your lucky seat.

Maybe you watched every game with your dad, and now you watch with your kids, and even grandkids. Maybe your grandfather introduced you to the team, and even though he's no longer around, you still think about him every time the band plays the fight song.

You've spent decades sitting next to the same people in the stadium, people you never would have met if not for a shared obsession with a bunch of college kids wearing helmets.

Those things matter; they are real, and they can’t be taken away from you.

The beautiful part of all this is that not a single one of those traditions requires permission from ESPN, the NCAA, a conference commissioner, or the United States Congress.

Sure, they can change the rules. They can change the schedules. They can change the conferences. They can change how much money players make and how often those players change schools. They can put 12 teams in the playoff. Or 16, or 24, or however many they eventually decide will generate the most television revenue.

But they can't change what happens in your backyard on Saturday morning. They can't change the memories you have with your family, and they sure as hell can't tell you how much your school means to you.

Stop letting the business of college football steal your joy

I get it. The frustration is real. It’s not imagined. But it doesn’t have to consume your joy. I understand why fans get angry when a player transfers to a rival or a coach leaves for a bigger paycheck. You want those people to share the same level of loyalty that you do. 

They won’t. 

I understand why conference realignment feels ridiculous, why traditional rivalries disappearing from annual schedules is infuriating, and why watching people with enormous salaries argue about money can make you wonder whether anybody in charge actually cares about the sport.

They don’t. 

But here's my question: Why are we letting any of that dictate how much we enjoy Saturdays? Seriously. If your favorite player transfers tomorrow, are you suddenly going to stop loving your school? If your conference adds six teams from three different time zones, are you going to throw away your favorite sweatshirt?

Of course not.

Because your relationship with college football was never supposed to be transactional or reciprocal. You didn't become a fan because somebody promised you that players would stay four years, coaches would remain loyal, or conferences would never change.

You became a fan because something about that school grabbed hold of you, and you never let go.

So don't let the people chasing money convince you that your experience has to change just because their business model has. They weren't thinking about your Saturday traditions or the generations of families who built their lives around this sport when they signed those television contracts.

And they certainly weren't thinking about the emotional investment you've made over the last 10, 20, 30, or 50 years. Your loyalty was never the point of their decisions. So stop making their decisions the point of your loyalty.

Be the same college football fan you've always been

This Saturday, I hope you do exactly what you've always done.

Wake up excited and put on your team’s colors. Call your friends. Hug your family. Put on your lucky socks. Make the food. Pour the drinks. Turn on College GameDay if that's your routine, or ignore it entirely if you've had enough of that shirtless guy screaming at you.

Get to the tailgate early.
Sing the fight song too loudly.
Complain about the officials.
Celebrate a touchdown like you personally scored it.

Be completely unreasonable about your team's chances of winning the national championship, even if you're sitting at 3-4, and when your team loses, go ahead and let it ruin your afternoon for a little while.

The truth of it is, college football has never really been about having a perfect system. It has never been about fairness, stability, or whether the people running the sport were making decisions in the best interests of the fans -- it's about belonging.

It's been about having something to share with people you love, something to look forward to every fall, something that connects one generation to the next. And if you ask me, that's still worth getting excited about.

The players will come and go. The coaches will come and go. The conferences will change. The television networks will keep writing checks. The politicians will keep holding hearings. And the people in charge will keep finding new ways to make money.

As the popular saying goes, let them.

Because long after today's players have moved on, today's coaches have retired, and current conference commissioners have been forgotten, the fans will be there as passionate as they've ever been.

Somebody will still be standing in a parking lot on a crisp autumn morning, flipping burgers, tossing a football, and talking about how this might finally be their team's year, and somebody else will be sitting in a stadium, wearing the same school colors their parents wore, waiting for the band to play.

That's the college football I fell in love with; it’s the college football I still love, and that's the college football nobody can take away from us. 

Let them have the money. We’ll keep the Saturdays.

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