College football is in the air

My favorite time of year is right around the corner. I got a little taste of it last night when I attended the Redskins' first exhibition game of the season against Pittsburgh. I was happy to see that despite the long string of bad years this town has suffered, Washingtonians are still willing to don their Moss jerseys, pay exorbitant prices for tickets and make the trek out to Landover to support their team.

This time, the players rewarded us by not tripping over themselves, managing even to beat last year's Super Bowl runners up. When the Skins drew first blood on a beautiful toss from Rex Grossman to Santana, the crowd went crazy, belting out "Hail to the Redskins!" with the kind of enthusiasm I normally ascribe to college fans alone. I felt tinges of familiarity. It was almost like I was back at Florida Field.

Except not really.

Therein lies the real point of this blog post: for me to profess my undying devotion to college football and assert its superiority, as compared to the pros, in every way. Sure, the level of play of the NFL game may be higher. But so are the costs of fandom, and without the college game's rewards.

The adoration of the sport among players and spectators alike at the college level is unparalleled. It's matchless. Night games at the Swamp are an unearthly experience, one in which souls for miles join together in a wave of intensity and passion that I'm sure could power Gainesville if it could only be harnessed. I imagine fans at Death Valley or the Big House or The Shoe would say the same.

There's simply no way to argue the pro game can compare. Without the wild abandon of the student section, the pomp and circumstance of the marching band, the proud ownership of the program felt by decades of alumni, how could it ever hope to?

College football is more than a game. It's more, even, than an experience. It's a lifestyle, a way of living.

It's allowing yourself to be swept away in the magic of the season. To live and breathe and die with your team, knowing they are sweating and bleeding for you. It's to joyfully sacrifice whatever else may have the audacity to happen on a Saturday between Labor Day and New Year's and to instead immerse yourself in, to borrow a tagline the Masters don't deserve, a tradition unlike any other.

It's heaven. And it's here.

Three weeks from today, UF will open up another year. I have no idea what I think is going to happen.

I've always felt a high level of comfort in talking about our prospects in the off-season. A national championship was only ever twelve games away, and I knew my team well enough to have an idea about whether we could make a run. I was well-acquainted with the coach; I understood the system, having fallen in love with college football right alongside the introduction of the spread; and the players were my classmates in an abstract but still meaningful way.

This time around is very different.

We have a whole new coaching staff running an unproven pro-style offense. More importantly, I'm now three seasons removed from being a student there myself. Virtually none of the players I'd periodically cross paths with on campus are still around. The Gators are a different monster now, and with the press having been locked out of spring practices, I feel a complete absence of any sense of what to expect.

I'm nervous and excited and terrified and hopeful.

How amazing is it that a sport can make a person feel all that?