I'm defensive because, though I rarely watch the games, I enjoy listening to postgame interviews with the Alabama coach, Nick Saban. He's found unprecedented success in a brutally competitive field by following a textbook stoic philosophy people in the south call "The Process", by encouraging relentless pursuit of perfection in each individual's role, and showing little concern if that results in a win or a loss.
In every speech to players and fans he recites a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr: "If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."
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> "If students are leaving early, they must not be enjoying it"
Alabama typically wins games by 30-60 point margins (a touchdown is 7 points). Like any sport, close games are more exciting than blowouts. The students are getting bored in the last quarter, and leaving to return to tailgate parties and get drunk or avoid the traffic. Saban felt it was disrespectful and demotivating to the players who worked hard to win such staggering victories. In the genesis postgame interview, he yelled, "I've never been to a tailgate in my life!"
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> "American obsession with college football is absurd"
Generally, we hear this from self-hating Americans who wish to be European and American-hating Europeans who feel America is the source of all of their problems.
And generally, they share an obsession with soccer, or superhero movies, or something equally ridiculous as football.
American public universities are spread relatively evenly throughout the country, but major cities that support a professional team are not. So in the southeast and midwest, people rally support around local universities in the way that people in cities do for professional sports in America and in Europe.
Most of the fans of these university football teams never attended the university, but they are proud to still be apart of these traditions and it contributes tremendously to community cohesiveness. If you go to any southern tailgate, you'll see people from all ethnic groups and economic classes enjoying their time together.
Yes, this is tribalism. But maybe a little tribalism is good when half of the posts on hacker news are about the profound loneliness emerging in American society.
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> "It costs too much money"
Small private school football programs are struggling, yes. But many of them will not survive education changes in the coming decades regardless.
But football is very profitable for large public universities and funds other Title Nine sports programs like, most importantly to me, women's soccer. Title Nine is the best explanation for why we are so dominant in the Women's World Cup.
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> "Sports are a waste of time"
Yes, as are many of the things we choose to do with our time. Hopefully, no one is judging you for your unproductive time. But it sounds like many here are apart of a subgroup, like me, that didn't have much of a connection to the popular or well-adjusted kids in school. And so we find solace in looking down upon the things they enjoy. But being unjustly judgmental does not make us better than them, it makes us pathetic.