College Football: What’s All The Fuss About?

Nowadays, everyone seems to be going mental over American Football.  But what is it all about?

The arrival of the prestigious NFL international series on English soil in 2007 marked the beginning of a fresh nationwide interest in America’s passion.  Now, unless you’re a fanatical patriot who shuns the opportunity of exploring new cultural offerings, there’s every chance you may have even braved Southern pricing and dialect barriers and made the trip to Wembley at some point to see the likes of the Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, or the Chicago Bears do battle.

Michigan State University. This college team adopts the name ‘The Spartans’, just to give you a brief idea of the levels of tribalism that go hand in hand with this sport.

The sad reality, however, is for the majority of us British based lads- for whom the organisation levels involved in planning such an endeavour would be just short of terrifying- the closest we’ve ever actually come to experiencing this bizarre display of macho athleticism is perhaps a one off game of Madden on the odd occasion we’ve decided Fifa may have been played to death for the week; a rare event at best.

So here at The Tab we’ve decided it’s time to go grass roots level and briefly educate those of you who still consider a spot on the side-lines at Wyncote the dogs balls in terms of University spectating.

They don’t call it the land of opportunity for nothing, even skinnier specimens of this nature fulfil important roles on the side-lines, a student / cameraman in this case.

The admin for college football in the States is a mammoth task in itself, given the sheer size of the nation in which it takes place. A body called the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) stands over three divisions each of which consists of regionally based conferences: a sensible measure considering states like California and Virginia are around 2000 miles apart (a distance those of you who take the 699 from Carnatic to uni will be familiar with. Or you’re just a right saddo like myself and appreciate 80’s Christmas hits).

The FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) attracts such widespread attention even fans who don’t attend competing colleges watch the games (queue Mean Girls reference). One conference within this is the Atlantic Conference, hosting institutions like Virginia Tech and Florida State.

Lane Stadium, home of the Virginia Tech Hokies. With a capacity of over 66,000, this place has well over twice the capacity of premiership team Fulham’s Craven cottage.

Teams are then pitted against each other within these conferences and compete for the title of Conference Champion. Of the six conference champions that emerge victorious we then progress on to the bowl stage, which despite sounding like something you might have experienced whilst pre drinking in Zante, is actually the precursor to the overall championship game. The victor of this championship game is then crowned the national champion. Something of a big deal in a nation so competitive that once enjoyable past times such as eating are historically considered sport!

So there you have it, The Tab’s somewhat basic guide to everything college football.

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