About a week ago, a friend and I braved the I-94 traffic, shuttered homes, and homeless in an effort to see Eminem and Jay-Z in concert. Sometime after the parking attendant promised a $10 fee only to charge $20, but before unnamed female #1 started grinding on us in the presence of her boyfriend, Fletcher and I began a debate that is still ongoing. "Who do you think is better?"
Watching the NFL opener last night, my buddies Fletcher (of unnamed female #1 fame), Andrew, Josh and I had a similar discussion over which version of America's newest pastime is "better." Better in the "I'd rather have sex with her than her" kind of way, not in the "cheeseburgers are better than carrots" way. Which is just another way of saying "both."
Baseball is fun to watch only if you're at the game or have enough time to follow the sport on a daily basis (so everyone under the age of 23). Hockey playoffs are as intense as sports get, but an 82 game season? No thank you. And don't even bring up the NBA. College basketball is at least watchable (at least until John Calipari manages to recruit LeBron James back to school), but the NBA, with its referees looking at the name on the back of the jersey before deciding to call a foul, could cease to exist and I wouldn't miss it even a little.
Which leaves the Holy Grail of American sports: football. The NFL and FBS division of the college variety are akin to my unborn children. I've always been a college football guy (remember, the Detroit Lions are my NFL team), but with my beloved Michigan Wolverines losing to a 1-AA team and Toledo over the past three seasons, and needing what amounted to a Hail Mary to beat Indiana last year, I began listening to arguments. "Don't you want to watch the best players?" "Anything can happen on any given Sunday." "Your favorite player can stay with your team for 15 years, not just four." The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl, beating my two least favorite players (Brett Favre and Peyton Manning) in the process. The Lions drafted the best defensive player to enter the league in 20 years. The Jets were on Hard Knocks. My college football wall was crumbling.
And then September 4th happened. I have zero expectations for this year's Michigan football team. A bowl game would be nice. Winning a Big Ten game would be awesome. But as I sat in the 83rd row in front of an elderly man doing his very best to stifle "down in front" and watched as Michigan's Denard Robinson played the game--let's all remember that football is a game--the same way a teenager reacts after opening a college acceptance letter, I realized college football wasn't just Michigan for me. It's the Marshall University offensive line carrying their quarterback. It's Adam Taliaferro and Brock Mealer. It's Vince Young, Eric Crouch, and Tommie Frazier. It's Boise State, Stanford, and even (sigh) Appalachian State.
The NFL may have more fans (although that may be changing), but nothing beats a Saturday afternoon in Ann Arbor, Austin, or Oxford.
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