Saturday marks the start of one of college life’s greatest and most time-tested traditions - football season.
There isn’t a college student - past or present - who doesn’t know the feel of the electricity that pervades campus on those crisp autumn days featuring a game at their home stadium. Students, friends, family and fans fill bleacher seats in anticipation - a gigantic melting pot of people eager to see their teams compete.
College football season is not just a sporting event. Despite all the pregame analysis, television deals, controversial news items and commercialized memorabilia, there’s something more to it people sometimes fail to notice.
Spending a day with friends in the shadow of the green and white stadium lets you forget everything else that’s going on. It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement and activity that for even just a few brief hours, there’s nothing more important than cheering on your team.
As much as you might hate your classes, or as homesick as you might be, for just a little while it doesn’t matter.
Even if you can’t go to the game, it’s still a great bonding experience to watch the game on television with friends, eating foods to make your arteries cry out in protest while yelling at the screen.
Campus even looks different on game day. The throngs of people flooding every parking lot within a five-mile radius, stores plastered with support for the green and white, traffic jams clogging the streets - all make up a special part of that tapestry we weave on fall weekends.
And there’s always something to be said for hearing the fight song floating out of the stadium and into the streets below. For a little while, everyone can be filled with Spartan pride.
After all, the key thing to remember is that football is - underneath all its other trappings - a game. And really, there’s nothing more exciting than 72,000 people coming out to play.
It’s a childlike kind of fun that can be captured for years, long after those early years are gone.
Of course, there’s a pall over the big green bowl this year with the controversy surrounding two players and an incident involving a 13-year-old girl. There is disgust echoing from students and alumni, planned protests and a boycott of the entire season from some quarters.
And there’s always the usual scores of litter flooding the campus during and following the game, damages done to both property and the campus environment and simply general disarray taking over in places. We hope efforts by the university, including its Tailgating Project formed to help make sure things don’t get out of hand, can help.
Yes, there might be a negative light cast on the field this year. Some aspects of football season leave a sour taste in the mouths of some people. But when that ball gets snapped for the first play, when things finally get underway, hopefully it can become the game that it is.
Game day is an experience that every college student ought to experience at least once during their university career. The feelings of togetherness shared with the rest of the campus community are some that will last for a lifetime. Years from now they’ll serve as a warm reminder of what it was like to be a student.
On Saturday, MSU clashes with Central Michigan University in its first game of the season. Streets will be filled with cars, and parking lots will be filled with tailgaters. Thousands of people will come knocking on the university’s door, looking for a good time.
We hope campus can come out and play.
