College Football and Why I Am Forever a Fan

For college football fans and most sports fans in general, we are about to embark on one of the most exciting times of the year.

I grew up in a family where sports was #1.  It was the first thing on TV.  After all, television was invented for sports.  Wasn’t it?

The college ‘Bowl” season that used to be condensed into a few days at the end of the calendar year has now expanded outside that one week period into a much bigger thing.

I think I became hooked on college football and the bowl season in particular on December 29, 1978.  I had watched before, but I have to say that when legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes ‘lost it’ in the Gator Bowl and punched Clemson’s Charlie Bauman, I was a convert.  I remember the New Year’s Eve party that year as if it was yesterday because of Woody’s outburst in what would be his final game as a coach. It certainly was a sad day for Ohio State football and Woody Hayes whose career came to an abrupt end the next day.

All of the conversation at the New Year’s Eve party was about that old white haired coach who lost his cool.  Of course we were all in our early 20s and thought the 65 year old Hayes was in fact old.  That of course is a topic for another discussion since Penn State’s head coach Joe Paterno was a ‘youthful’ 52 that year, and in his 13th season as head coach of the Nittany Lions.  Penn State lost 14-7 to another legendary coach Bear Bryant and Alabama in the Sugar Bowl that year.  We will be able to see Joe Paterno in this year’s Rose Bowl leading his team against the USC Trojans. 

For me 30 years later, I look back at the event as one of the first things I recall vividly about college bowl games.  It now seems like I have been forever a fan, anxiously awaiting the matchups and watching football as if it has been a long tradition for me. 

When you consider the names I just mentioned … Hayes, Paterno and Bryant, and the fact that Joe is still around, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I fell in love with College Football and the Bowl season in the waning days of 1978 and the first few days of 1979.

I will be sitting by the tube this holiday season focused intently on the action and wondering if we will ever see the kind of shocking, unbelievable turn of events that we saw in the 1978 Gator Bowl.

It may have grown into a 34-game football fan’s dream smorgasbord which will no doubt be serving the odd ‘turkey’, but I know for sure I will enjoy it as always!