1. Bowl Week. The most imperfect championship system in sport is also the system that makes watching the games worthwhile. There aren’t any play-in games the Tuesday before Bowl Week between the 64th and 65th ranked teams in the country (according to some computer) to decide who gets to lose to the best team in the country in two days. I get to vegetate in front of a television for three days and watch quality game, after quality game all leading up to an all-telling championship game, even if there is still some controversy lingering afterward. That just makes me want even more.
2. Joe Paterno. The grandfather of college football. Never was there a classier football coach, and never was there a better football man. Strolling the sideline like a faithful sentry, complete with coke-bottle glasses and a will to win unmatched by any man before. JoePa has seen presidents come and go, the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall and has outlasted every other coach that ever graced the opposing sideline. He has built a tradition of fine football teams, but always fine men first.
3. Saturday afternoons in fall. The summer officially ends when the first whistle blows to start the first game of the year. Fall means changing leaves, fall means dropping temperatures, and fall means Saturday-afternoon football games. The day Princeton played Rutgers in the first collegiate football game more than 100 years ago, football was forever etched into the American conscience. Saturday mornings are for mowing the lawn and cleaning the house. Saturday afternoons are for football.
4. The Wishbone. This formation spurred the triple-option and the midline option. It has been run by nearly every major college program, from Knute Rockne’s championship Notre Dame teams to Barry Switzer’s championship Oklahoma teams. Vince Lombardi ran the wishbone at St. Joseph’s prep, his first coaching job back in New Jersey, and the Green Bay Packers and every stop in between. From this formation he perfected the “run-to-daylight” philosophy. The wishbone is the underdog’s best friend. You don’t have to be bigger or faster or even better to win with the wishbone. You only have to be more disciplined and to want it more.
5. Keith Jackson. The voice of reason: Mr. Jackson. He never uses 10 words when five will do and never seems to get a call wrong. He is the voice two generations of Americans grew up listening to. Jackson can make even the most pointless games seem like they have national-title implications and has committed the history of Gatorade into the national conscience simply by narrating one commercial. Simply put, Jackson is the voice of college football.
