College Football

With a family of Nebraska fans, it’s hard for me not to be a college football fan. It’s something I’ve grown up watching with my family, and every year about this time, things get exciting. Tomorrow for example, is a rather important Big 12 Championship game between Oklahoma and Nebraska. A classic rivalry in the sport, and the final time Nebraska will be playing in the Big 12 (and for the Big 12 Championship no less). It has the makings of a game that could go down in history as “Amazing”.

However, as I think back… there are very few football games that I “remember” watching… In fact, even the ones I do remember, I rarely know what happened throughout the game, but more so, single plays (often which are later given names because of how amazing they were). Those plays were things like last second missed field goals, last second missed touchdown passes… Or of course, my preferred memories, last second plays for the win that seem impossible… For example, “The Flea Kicker” play against Missouri that I still quote to this day:

But there’s only one game that I truly remember watching…. And it isn’t even a Nebraska Football game… I arrived at the start of the 2nd quarter when my Dad and Grandpa called me in to come watch Oklahoma getting blown out in BCS Bowl game they had been watching to fill the time. I walked in to my amazement to see that OU was down 14 to nothing against Boise State… A team that most people considered to be in a “weak conference” and to have “no hope” against OU. They were “extreme underdogs”. In fact, if I remember correctly, my dad said they were supposed to lose by 28.

As the game went on OU to fight back… It was a non stop battle from start to finish. From the point I started watching, to the point at the end of the game the game just gets more and more amazing. It was so amazing to me, that at the end of the night, I bought it on iTunes, and to this day, still keep the “short cut” version on my ipod so that I can relive the emotions that I was experiencing at the end of the game. If you haven’t seen it, it’s available on Hulu:

There’s also a short cut available here, however, I don’t feel that it lives up to the emotion until you’ve seen the full cut:

But that’s just it, it was the “perfect” underdog story, properly placed climax and all, unfolding before your eyes. I didn’t even care about either team… the story was what made it so intriguing.

The best part was though sharing that moment with my father and grandfather. It was simply an amazing experience… As are so many of the college football games I watch… Is it the plays that make it amazing… sometimes. But I think it’s the stories that come with them, of times together, of heartbreak, of success against all odds, that make college football (and maybe professional football for others), such an amazing sport to watch.