College Football

College football couldn't have come soon enough this year. Seriously, my sanity was hanging by a thread. I guess I never realized the place football has in our society until this year when so many things in my life are upended. Now don't get me wrong, I am insanely passionate about the game of football(see this post), but this year I was impacted not so much by the game itself, but by the place it has in our society.
Somehow, football has become America's new passtime. Just like baseball used to be associated in everyones mind with school getting out, summer days by the pool, 4th of july parties, and sneaking in a few more playoff games before the weather turns cold, so now, it seems, we associate football with the weather turning cooler, the leaves turning color, great fall comfort foods, staying warm indoors with family, thanksgiving, and an overall sense of home and family. Even my wife who doesn't really know much about the game of football commented to me the other day that "when you have the game on it just feels homey in here."
Now, I don't think that football has done something right, and baseball has done something wrong-- Errrr... Well, lets say football hasn't totally screwed itself the way baseball has. That said, I feel much of this shift in national attitude comes from national shifts in population. As our population shifts dramatically from northern to southern latitudes, our national attitude about the seasons changes. No longer do the majority of us celebrate summer as the time when it finally is warm enough to go outside with a tshirt on. Instead, many of us now dread the terrible heat of the summer and look forward to celebrating the end of our misery, fall. And football is lucky enough to be the game that begins just as the miserable heat's grip begins to weaken.
But whatever the reason, football, especially college football, came just in time to save my sanity this year.