Love Thursday: Friday Edition

"Some day, there's going to be a special man in your life and he's going to wonder how he got so lucky as to have you," Brian said.

"I'm so happy to hear you say that -- it's the same fairy tale I've been telling myself for years!" I replied.

This exchange took place smack in the middle of our run-down of the results of the weekend's college football games. Brian, sadly, is an Ohio State fan. But there are worse things in life -- he could root for the Irish.*

The thing that surprises him is that I'm not just interested in how my beloved Badgers fared, or even what took place in the rest of the Big Ten, but that my passion for college football is all-encompassing.

In one Saturday I watched considerable portions of ten games and followed scores for a couple dozen more. Michigan-Notre Dame got top billing that afternoon, but once Michigan had the game firmly in hand (you know, sometime in the second quarter), I could stray away from ABC to coverage of other games. At one point I was flipping channels among five games, even sinking so low as to watch the Virginia Tech routing of Duke or the Kansas State-Marshall game on FSN when everyone else was at commercial break. (Fox Sports Net!!! I thought my head would explode! Or at the very least, the television.)

I'm not quite sure where this deep, abiding love for college football comes from. Certainly my high school football team didn't endear me to the game. (Hello, 0-8 season! Nice to see you! Again.) And, while I bleed green and gold, the NFL just doesn't do it for me. Sure, it's entertaining, and I follow the standings and participate in a pool every year, but...it's just not the same. College football is a special thing, something I couldn't live without, and I knew it when looking at colleges.

Girl on the phone, calling from a liberal arts school that I desperately wanted to go to but had no idea how I'd swing the $30k price tag: So, do you have any questions for me?
Me: Uh, like what do you do on the weekends?
Girl: Oh, there's coffee shops and stuff around here that we hang out at.
Me: [uncomfortable silence]
      So, um, you don't, like, go to football games on Saturday afternoons?
Girl: Well, I think we have a football team, but no, no one goes.

I got off the phone thinking, THANK GOD SHE CALLED. She just saved me $120,000 worth of student loans. I mean, if she'd told me she was in a sorority and spent her weekends doing lines and the baseball team, that may have kept the school on the list, but no one cares about football??? Pass.

So there you have it: my litmus test is college football. I've dated a lot of Baseball Boys lately. And while that's an enjoyable game, too, it's not something I will ever be obsessed about. Thankfully, my friends share the football love. I'm visiting Danielle and Jennie in LA this weekend and the only packing instruction I received was, be sure to bring a Wisconsin t-shirt cuz we're watching the game with the alumni club. 9:00 on a Saturday morning and it's a given that we'll be at a bar, cheering on the Badgers, and loving every minute of it.


*For the record, I'm not anti-Notre Dame. I'm anti-overrated-teams-
who-are-trading-on-tradition-and-decades'-old-glory-not-real-talent.