Bring on the major leagues

It's no secret that I used to hate college football. There are too many teams, too many conferences, and the system never made any sense. I was too young to be thinking about what college I wanted to go to, so I didn't have a team I followed. The players weren't as good as in the NFL (obviously). It was on television all day on Saturdays, which in a weird way made me go outside and exercise.

Football was pretty big in my high school. We always had a good team, but people weren't insane about it like I understand they are in other states (…Texas). Our high school games were an excuse to hang out on a Saturday with our friends and try and meet girls, which wasn't always easy at an all-male school. Frankly, it was the thing to do and they were always a lot of fun to go to. I even played my sophomore year.

I'll admit, college admissions were pretty easy for me. USC was really recruiting me, and there were a very good school for my initial (and eventual) major, so it was an easy choice. Not really paying attention to college football, I didn't know anything about how well respected and prestigious the program was in the past. It was kind of cool to take a tour of the campus and see 4 Heisman trophies on display.

When I started at SC I got really really sick and was out of commission for a couple of months, which left me with a lot of homework to catch up with and few new friends to hang out with. USC football games are very much like my high school football games, except instead of a 1,000 people acting like idiots with their hormones going crazy, its 85,000 stupid people drunk with their hormones going crazy. When I was finally healthy enough I started going to every game at the coliseum. It was great fun, I met a ton of people, and it made me start to really feel at home at USC.

The one bad part was our team was terrible. Terrible terrible terrible. SC was a shadow of its past glories. We had a crappy coach. We had a really crappy quarterback. We didn't even make it into a crappy bowl game (the Las Vegas Bowl) until my sophomore year. And we lost it.

We finally started looking good my senior year. That crappy quarterback we had finally pulled out a decent season, and for some reason got a completely undeserved Heisman. We won a birth to the Orange Bowl that year in Miami, and I went to the game. The trip was one of the most fun experiences in my life.

I graduated that spring. I made a promise to myself my freshman year that I wasn't going to be one of those alumni who keeps going back to games year after year. These were the people I made fun of every game I attended. But I was (and still am) dating a girl who was still a senior at SC, so I broke my own rule and went to a couple games that year, and even went to the Rose Bowl and watch said team win 1/2 of the National Championship. We now had a great coach, an even better Offensive Coordinator, an amazing receiver (who the NCAA wouldn't allow to play this year), and a quarterback that was 10 times better than Carson Palmer.

I have no excuse now. I've been out of SC for two years, and yet I watch every game I can (although I didn't watch any games in person this year) and I was screaming my head off last night while the Trojans were destroying Oklahoma. Some called it a bad game, but I absolutely love it when my favorite team kills someone else.

I'm now kind of at a standstill. Matt Leinart is going to have to choose between playing his senior year at SC and go for a third national championship or enter the NFL, where he more than likely will be the #1 draft choice and go to my beloved 49ers. Either way, I'll be happy.