The Victors

I couldn't agree more, and I'll expand on that a little. When I was a kid (went to my first game at age 11) and then in college in AA, the game pretty much WAS the whole experience. I didn't tailgate or meet up with old friends; I didn't walk around AA (I lived there after all). The game was the game -- always. And it was great!

That was 40-55 years ago (Jesus), and today the game is still the main thing, of course, but all the social stuff of going to one or two games a year is now huge as well.

But here's the thing: The game AS AN EXPERIENCE is WAY worse than it was 40-55 years ago. Not only is it wildly more expensive, it's now such a huge pain in the ass to sit in the stadium for literally AN HOUR more of game breaks than existed in the 1970s and 45 minutes more than in the 1980s, because the TV monster needs to sell product to pay for the billions of dollars in broadcast rights, that in turn pay for all those $20 million indoor rowing facilities, as well as the ten million dollar head coach salaries, the three million dollar coordinator salaries, the $2.5 million salary for the AD to fuck everything up etc etc. A relatively minor annoyance is the shitty rock music played at 11 and the scoreboard ad/promo bombardment but it all adds up.

My brother recently took a couple of friends to a UM game who weren't really sports fans, let alone college football fans, and their reaction was "people like this?" And I can totally see how that would be the reaction now to what Chris Schenkel used to call the "color and pageantry of an autumn afternoon."

All of which is to say the team needs to win, because to sit through LOSING football under the conditions of attending games in 2026 feels increasingly intolerable. And which makes all the outside the game stuff an even bigger part of the experience, in a good way, but ultimately the games are still the thing, even if not as much as back in the day.