A game that dares to be different

I have a confession to make: For most of my life, I’ve cared a lot more about the NFL than college football.

Shocking, I know. I’ve gotten into a lot of arguments over the years with people who seemed to think that this made me a terrible person. In fact, as I was writing this, a friend of mine read the first line over my shoulder and told me he was disappointed in me. Seriously. That’s not a joke. That actually happened.

Anyway, I’m not here to start that argument again. It’s pointless. Besides that, since I’ve come to UCLA I’ve started drinking the Kool-Aid of the college game. I didn’t grow up with any particular college team, so until I became a Bruin I didn’t really care what was happening on Saturdays. Now I have a team, and I care.

And like most other guys in college, I spend way too much time caring. For example, all of last Saturday. No, I didn’t road trip up the coast to fully embrace every aspect of the Bruins’ opener in Palo Alto. I took the lazy man’s path to football over-indulgence: I sat on my couch with my remote and watched as many games as possible. Along the way, I ran into some of the things that, for years, I’ve been told repeatedly, have been making the college game better than the NFL:

The Pageantry: Cheerleaders. Yell crew. Face paint. Tailgating. The NFL has its die-hards, but in college football everyone just seems to care more, and they wear that caring on their sleeves. And heads. And stomachs. And mini-skirts. Even if I don’t always throw myself 100 percent behind every aspect of the fanfare of college games, I have learned three things about “pageantry”: our dance team rocks, USC’s male cheerleaders are absolutely ridiculous, and Virginia Tech took the most important run out of any tunnel in any stadium in America on Saturday. Maybe a football game can’t heal an entire school’s wounds, but that one did its best to try. Because when it comes to caring more about football, it goes double in the South.

The Offense: College coaches try things that just won’t fly in the NFL. The spread has gone from being a small-conference sensation to being a way of life all over the country. Vince Young spent his career at Texas playing almost exclusively out of the shotgun. It’s gotten to the point that pro scouts question whether some college QBs can succeed in the NFL outside of the systems they ran in college. At the same time, Bobby Petrino turned offensive innovation at Louisville into a head coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons. And who knows? Sometime this season, I may have to use the words “offensive innovation” in the same sentence as the words “Joey Harrington.”

The Upsets: The No. 1 reason I’ve been told for years that college football is more exciting than the NFL ““ anyone can beat anyone else, supposedly. It doesn’t happen often, but as last week’s Appalachian State win over Michigan proves, sometimes the unknown school beats the big-conference titan. And when that happens, people pay attention. I mean, would the sports world be making a big deal if the Oakland Raiders had beaten, well, anyone?

I love the NFL, but those are a few of the reasons why I pay attention to college football now. It’s fun, it’s high-scoring, people care when David takes down Goliath, and, most of all, I go to UCLA. In the end, college football is mostly about the home team, and we have a good one. Our dance team looks good, and so does our offense. Unfortunately, though, I can’t say that we’ve loaded up our nonconference schedule with juggernauts to make sure some helpless team doesn’t come along and upset us.

I mean, did you see Notre Dame play Saturday?

If you’d also like to tell Lampros he’s a terrible person, he can be contacted at [email protected].