3 Ways to Improve the Already-Awesome College Football Experience

SaturdayDownSouth12 years ago

Guest column by Saturday Down South. For college football commentary, follow @SDS

There aren’t many things in this world that get my blood circulating quite like waking up on a Saturday morning in the fall. College football is among life’s greatest gifts, from the smell of the pit burning to the sound of the band. It’s all exhilarating. Like anything else though, there are always ways to improve the experience. These are a few proposals.

1. Implement Adult Fraternities

I have a myriad of memories sitting in various SEC stadiums during my days as a college student. Wins and losses come and go, but one thing that was consistent during my tenure as a college student was the ability to maximize fraternity membership during games.
Maximizing fraternity membership essentially means taking advantage of pledges. Home team driving down the field for a potential game-winning touchdown? I’m feeling thirsty. “Pledge, go ahead and go get me a Gatorade. Make sure it’s cold.” Pledges work the games. It’s just one of those things you have to go through for a semester. We all did it, then we reaped the benefits of the system for the following three (or more) years.

Should we travel to a school or stadium where beer was sold in-stadium, then the pledges were worked three times as hard.

The beautiful thing in this setup is that the pledges work willingly. The system is perfect. Willing workers are paid nothing except the assurance that if they can last through a semester then they get to have someone running beers during games for them in the future.
In fact the system is so perfect, I’m not sure why we don’t implement this as adults? The guys from “Old School” had it right. Fraternities don’t need to be confined to college students. Let’s bring back fraternities. It’s a great way to enhance the college football in-game experience.

2. Sell Alcohol On-Campus

This goes hand-in-hand with having pledges run drinks during games. Forget Gatorade. Start selling alcohol at stadiums. This has massive ramifications in a number of areas. Not only would it improve the in-game experience, but it can probably plug the fiscal and budgetary gaps that countless academic institutions are facing.

There will be some losers in such a situation. For instance, the CamelBak company which sells those awesome hydration systems that you can wear under your clothes that college students fill with liquor every Saturday would likely suffer. I wonder if CamelBak employs lobbyists to ensure state schools keep alcohol banned in stadium? Probably.

3. Encourage Coaches To Tweet During Games

The best commentary that is being under-utilized is the in-game commentary from some of the top coaches in the game. Whether it’s Bobby Petrino screaming at Les Miles across the field or Saban doing his thing where he unleashes his Hulk-like anger for a few minutes, this is under-utilized commentary.

A way to fix this would be to unleash the coaches on Twitter mid-game. Eliminate the side-line reporter. Give Steve Spurrier an iPhone and a live twitter account. Now we’re talking. For those of us watching the game at-home, I’d undoubtedly be watching the Twitter feed if such a situation were enabled.

We constantly see celebrities and athletes put their foot in their mouth on Twitter. The best way to see a coach do this is to hand him a smartphone after his senior quarterback gets blindsided and ripped in half on 3rd and 4. Let’s make this happen.