Saturdays Are For Hate

The Truth About College Football

On Saturday the new fans of college football courtesy of one Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders learned some hard lessons at the hands of the Oregon Ducks. Depending on your background and familiarity with the game, you either took the 42-6 loss incredibly hard or celebrated a little too enthusiastically.

It was the OJ verdict, only played out on a wet, dreary Saturday afternoon, the stakes much lower but the racial divide all too familiar to veterans of the culture wars. For fans of college football the result didn’t feel in question. For fans of bandwagons, perhaps, there was some level of surprise and a number of truths to be taken from the game.

First and foremost is something incredibly simple—once the game moves from the television studio to the field, no amount of pre-game hype or Audemars Piguet watches can replace actually competing, actually preparing and actually building a culture of winners. Before the game the talk was all about Sanders. After, it was the words of Ducks coach Dan Lanning that reverberated through the college football world.

“They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins,” Lanning told his team before the Ducks took the field. “There’s a difference.”

Oregon whooped the Colorado Buffaloes because they always whoop the Buffaloes (9-1 since the teams renewed the rivalry in 2011). They are a good program. Colorado is a bad program. There are 133 Division One college teams and they are pretty firmly divided into winners and losers. A few teams move seamlessly between those two states, but for the most part, the sad sack Charlie Browns are always going to be have that football pulled out from under them by a collection of 260-pound bullies.

Oregon is Lucy. Colorado are a collection of blockheads.

The Buffaloes, despite the AFLAC commercial and the perma-spot in the ESPN talking heads rotation, are traditionally garbage. Since 2006, they’ve had just a single winning season (Non-COVID), a track record of futility the University broke the bank to erase by signing Sanders to a five-year contract.

The second, and perhaps most important, take-away from the game? College football fandom is not for the faint of heart.

Some online were aghast at the people celebrating the Sanders’ family’s temporary fall from grace. And, sure, no doubt some of the fist-pumping was the product of good old-fashioned racial animus, especially after Colorado was proclaimed “Black America’s team” for weeks. There were certain white folks a little too happy about the loss, no question.

But I don’t think it’s fair to paint too broadly with that brush. There was a lot going on here, starting with what many perceived as the undeserved attention being paid to the Buffaloes. Ideally, sports is a meritocracy. But Colorado was being crowned before they’d truly earned the attention and the accolades. To many, the blowout loss felt like karma for a team and a coach who were anointed without doing the pesky little things like winning.

And then there’s this—college sports isn’t just about watching your team win. It’s about the glorious pleasure of watching your rivals fail. All around the country you’ll find intense, almost pathological rivalries, Hatfields and McCoys in helmets and jockstraps in perma-proxy battles to solve a region’s problems. One of my favorite sports books of all-time in Will Blythe’s incredible To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, a look at the intense and very personal rivalry between North Carolina and Duke basketball.

“I am a sick, sick man. Not only am I consumed by hatred, I am delighted by it. I have done some checking into the matter and have discovered that the world's great religions and wisdom traditions tend to frown upon this,” Blythe writes. “…There is no end to my gloom. My father is in his grave, my marriage is kaput, my girlfriend is said to be in Miami (though what she is doing there I can't say, since we're not speaking), I have no income, and yet the thing that is driving me over the edge is a basketball game.”

Most sports leagues are built on love—love of individual players you follow from franchise to franchise, love of the laundry your pappy and grand-pappy rooted for and your kids will root for, forever through eternity.

There are elements of that familial history in college sports too.

But just as fundamental to the college football experience is the burning, fierce desire to see a rival brought low. The first time I ever saw two grown men fight was inside the hallowed confines of Williams-Brice Stadium, a blowout victory for the Clemson Tigers leaving the thousands of Carolina Gamecock fans feeling a little salty. The Tigers had won seven of ten since their national title in 1981 and a loser mentality was starting to seep into the faithful in the State capital.

As the men rolled around on the ground and eventually down the coliseum steps, I understood something that has stuck with me to this day. Some may claim Saturday is for the boys.

Fans of college football?

They know Saturday is for hate.

Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.