Ed Board loves Mustang football and college football in general. We not only enjoy the game, but the celebration and spirit behind the event as well.
So whether you’re an athlete, an athletic supporter or an apathetic student reading this because you simply adore the Opinion Page- we’ve compiled several reasons why you should care about college football, especially SMU’s.
From a student standpoint, football is probably the best way to see the college campus coming together as a community. As much as Ed Board loves a good protest, nothing gets as many students all in one place like a football game. Where else on campus can you find an activity that so many people care about? We know the field, we know the cheers and we know the players.
College football players are very real people that we all interact with everyday. That’s part of what makes college football that much richer than professional football. As great as players like New England’s Tom Brady or Dallas’ Terrell Owens are, how can we relate to men who get paid an obscene amount of money to play a game for less than half of the year? College football players are much more real. They’re the guys sitting next to you in the lecture hall, the men going back for a second helping at Umphrey Lee, the well-rounded individuals who must balance a college education with training, conditioning and practice.
That’s not to say that college football doesn’t have its dark side, which is even more reason to care (or worry) about it. College football is essentially an industry in which universities and companies make millions of dollars off the talents of kids that, for the most part, can’t even legally drink yet.
College football stands at a moral crossroads, mostly due to the fact that more and more under-the-table dealings occur every year. If college football cannot stay true to its pure roots, then it is likely to succumb to little more than being an amateur NFL.
Mustang football has the chance to represent the best of what college football has to offer. The Mustangs have been trying to recover for over a decade and a half from the Death Penalty in the 1980s.
We have the potential to be a proverbial phoenix, if only we can get out from under all of our ash from the past. With momentum from last season’s excellent finish, a coach with job security after a contract extension, and a schedule with only two games to be played out of Texas, Ed Board thinks that this year we have more to be optimistic about than ever before.
