College football reflections from an expat Aussie

Before this Sydney boy exported himself to Chicago three years ago, I was well aware of the profile of college football since I saw the movie Rudy back in the early 90s.

Little did I know that my Notre Dame cap would receive so many comments, both positive and negative, the first few times I wore it.

Media coverage of college football during the autumn is abundant. Cities like Chicago are awash with people wearing the jerseys and other merchandise of their favourite college.

The largest city after Los Angeles and New York doesn’t really have a college team of note, with the University of Chicago being more concerned with winning Nobel prizes (Barack Obama) and nearby Northwestern University only just losing the inauspicious title of most games lost in college football history.

However the city is a magnet for young professionals looking to further their careers and most of them bring with them college allegiances from all over America.

On any Autumn Saturday, hundreds of sports bars become separated along college lines with alumni congregating en masse. Most of the large Big 10 (the largest conference in the region) schools will have numerous designated fan bars.

From my experience, Americans are a lot more domestically transient than us Australians. This often begins at college where it is basically a rite of passage to pack up and leave home to live in another state and experience what is often the best four years of their lives.

This is quite distinct from Australia where most people stay in their home city for University and the majority of us live at home with our parents. University towns are great party places where the whole city revolves around the University.

I think this environment contributes to a bonding experience and creates a certain pride and affection for ones alma mater that we do not see in Australia. Game day in places like Ann Arbor will see five decades of Michigan alumni tail gating (drinking beer and BBQing) in a car park for several hours prior to the game.

Not wearing team colours in a town like Ann Arbor on a Saturday results in never ending stares of suspicion by locals. The existence of fraternities and the need to host parties due to not being allowed into bars until 21 adds to the bonding experience.

Apart from following the football team, Americans generally make a much bigger deal about what college someone went to on academic and social levels than we do in Australia.

Last year I had the pleasure of attending my second game at Michigan stadium – otherwise known as the Big House – with 115,118 other people.

The only way to get tickets was via Stubhub. A seat 70 rows back behind the posts was $200. Well, it was not really a seat but a bench with two lines on it where I had to wedge my backside for four hours.

There is no complaining about the high cost of beer, because like all NCAA venues it is alcohol free – even though most people had definitely had their fair share by the time they entered the stadium.

During the half time, alumni and benefactor Stephen Ross – also the owner of the Miami Dolphins – was presented to the crowd to thank him for his kind donation of $200million to the University, of which half goes to the athletic department.

The founder of Nike, Phil Knight is another billionaire that has donated similar amounts to Oregon and Stanford.

Michigan Stadium is the largest in the country, far bigger than all the NFL stadiums and attracts the largest average crowd of over 111k last year. Ohio State and Alabama attracted 100k plus home crowds last year and a total of 16 teams attracted home crowds of more than 80k average.

In all the 123 teams in the NCAA division one, FBS attracted 35 million people to 782 regular season games. That’s 45k on average and nearly three million per week. In contrast the 32 teams in the NFL attract an average 67k to their smaller but definitely more luxurious stadia.

Apart from college pride, one reason college football attracts so many fans is that in this nation of over 300 million there are only 32 NFL teams. There are many large cities and vast tracts of the country that have no NFL representation.

Most residents of the state of Alabama are either Auburn or Alabama fans due to the fact there is no pro team in the state. Of the top 30 college teams by crowd average, only USC and UCLA are located in what could be described as a major city – Los Angeles, which unbelievably hasn’t had an NFL team in 20 years.

Unlike most European football leagues, there are virtually no minor or lower leagues of note. There are some fantastic athletes that play college football and the vast majority of them will only get a college degree at best from their time.

It must be quite the come down from playing in front of 100k people to working your regular office job at the bottom of the corporate ladder a year later. The NFL website states that only 1.7 per cent of college players go on to play professionally.

The other big reason I can see for the love of the college game is that for many people it is a throwback to the good old days where sport was not about money and fame.

The coach is the star in college football and is quite often seen as more powerful than the University president. College football represents playing for the opportunity and the game lacks the over inflated egos of pro sports.

Indeed excessive showboating is penalised – as former Australian at LSU, Brad Wing, will testify.

Teamwork seems to be of much larger importance than individual brilliance.

College football is definitely a strange entity for Australians to understand. It is high quality but not the best of the best – yet still immensely popular.

History, college pride and the relatively small number of pro teams in the USA will not see this change for decades. The talk of compensation for players will continue but that’s an argument that won’t be solved any time soon.