“You know that Colorado College’s football team is undefeated?” I casually joked to my cousin. At the time, I knew it was a weak joke, but it was lost to her anyway—she didn’t know enough about CC to know that we don’t have a football team, and in all likelihood, she probably didn’t hear me in the first place. To expect a laugh out of her was overly optimistic.
However, I don’t blame myself for making the pathetic little joke—I blame Thanksgiving. As my relatives and I inhaled an exorbitant amount of hors d’oeuvres this holiday, the males of my family, from my brother to my dad to my grandfather to my uncles, were all moving in and out of the TV room, flipping through the various NFL games and checking scores.
No one in my family is a particularly avid football fan, but they care enough to know how teams are doing. After all, something just feels right about watching football on Thanksgiving; it’s practically as commonplace as serving pecan pie.
Therefore, by making my joke, I was trying to find some way to relate to the football atmosphere. I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing out on something by lacking my own college football team to talk about.
It didn’t help that I had been constantly scrolling through Instagram posts of my various friends at their east coast college football games all fall. But, what made me feel most deprived was attending a football game at my brother’s school, Wake Forest University.
It’s impossible not to feel very American at a college football game. From the tailgating prior to the event to the half-time show, you feel the tradition in every moment. I relished getting my picture taken with the school mascot, the Demon Deacon.
I inhaled the strong scent of hotdogs and fries with a smile. I couldn’t resist getting swept up in the excessive cheering that comes with a solid touchdown. As a bonus, we were also seated right by the student marching band. Naturally, by the time the game was over, I definitely felt that I had been deprived of a wonderful pastime these past few months.
Still, rather than mope about this feeling, I decided to consider how CC makes up for its lack of football. To start, CC is privileged to have a wide array of other competitive sports to watch. Not only do we have numerous Division III teams, we have two impressive Division I teams: women’s soccer and men’s hockey.
Moreover, even our club and intramural teams are exciting to watch—I attended a few rugby games, and while I still don’t have any idea of how the game works, I was amazed by the physical endurance needed for the sport. Sure, we don’t have football, but we have plenty of other entertaining sports to look on, even just passing the intramural soccer games on the way to Worner Center.
Beyond spectating, however, football has another component—that sense of tradition and “American-ness.” To this, I say that you cannot feel any more connected to the nature of this country than at CC. We literally have “America’s Mountain” as the backdrop to our campus.
Students are constantly getting outdoors to explore the wilderness of the region, doing activities that have been around for generations. Just swap out hotdogs and fries with trail mix and Clif bars, the cheers for touchdowns with cheers for reaching the summit, and you’ve got yourself an equally legitimate and satisfying American pastime. And it’s free from commercialization and competitiveness.
While I’ll always be a little wistful about having no CC football jersey, tailgating routine, or home game schedule, I can’t really say that CC has no football alternatives to offer. Another team to watch would only take fans from other games, and hotdogs wouldn’t mix with our vegetarian diets anyway. What makes CC great is how it always functions with a style and set of traditions all its own—why ruin that with football?
Sarah Laico