You know, I've spent a lot of time talking about college football and yapping about this team or that and attempting to analyze just what is happening and what the trends are on the gridiron. And I know that I am not among the better analysts on the planet, but I do enjoy when I can see things that others may not necessarily notice when they watch the game. And, for all its ridiculousness, foibles, weirdness and imperfections, I do love this sport. Even when it does break my heart through the agency of that frustrating quantity known as Ohio State football. But I know that the game always goes on and I enjoy it -- even when my Buckeyes have let me down again.
There are many things I love about college football and I have no doubt I will enumerate all of them in my annual effort to quantify a sport that relies on two things for its allure: timeless permanence and constant flux. And I could spend long hours analyzing the ways in which the hierarchical and anarchic nature of the game mirrors the stories of great nations. And I could fill books with this and many more odes to an essentially silly game, yet now is not the time for those tales. For now, there is but one allure of the Saturdays on campus that comes to mind now. And that is Sundays.
Fridays belong to high school, Saturdays belong to college and Sundays belong to the pros. Yes, I agree that those are the days when they play, but for me, there is something you should know about Sundays, and that is something I learned long ago, thanks to donuts.
When I was but a young man enjoying the third straight year of his fourth year of college, I had my own apartment, a daily newspaper subscription and plenty of time on the weekends. I'd been known to enjoy my beers on Saturdays, but I still managed to wake up in time for some relaxation in the early hours of the Sabbath. And as I was largely neglecting my Fourth Commandment at the time, I would wake up, walk to the apartment next door where my newspaper was delivered every day and wander down to the local Buckeye Donuts for a pleasant morning of coffee and pastry that had somehow lost its center.
True, at times, the center was ably replaced by some sort of jelly or sugary goo, but it was a pastry that wanted a center and I enjoyed that facet of it. And I enjoyed my diner coffee and my place at the counter. And I enjoyed seeing the same server every weekend and saying hello. And I enjoyed sitting at the counter by the window and watching the world go by.
It was and is still my favorite corner of the world: that particular parcel of dirt that straddles the 40th parallel and has somehow become associated with and a source of many of my greatest joys -- the most recent being the woman whom I met there and, 15 short years later, married.
Those hours were pleasant and, someday I'll talk about them. But for now, it is time to talk about what I learned while I sat at that counter, enjoying the secret hours when the campus rested from the excesses of the day before. What I learned is the joy of college football Saturdays when seen through the lens of Sunday.
Saturday is the day when it happens. All the noise and joy and excitement and anticipation and eruption and fear and catharsis and relief and pain that makes the game of college football so enthralling is Saturday. It is a day of feeling, of emotion, of sopping up every last ounce of energy in the air and consuming it like a great feast of all that feeds, elevates and breaks the human heart. And I love Saturdays for all that.
Yet Sunday is the time when the great enjoyments of the game are found in the mind. The heart has had its sway for its time, now it is time for the pleasures of thought to take their place on the stage.
It is thought that tempers those emotions that have had their reign. It is thought that brings wisdom to consider all that was seen the day before. It sees, remembers and considers. It looks through stats and pieces them together. It ponders all that was and may be. It considers how things may yet play out on that field that brought sublime passions to the fore but scant hours ago.
But Sunday is, most of all, a time to savor and swallow. Victories can be rolled around the tongue like a fine cognac, providing nuances that are both fresh and familiar; it feels light and yet there was that nibble it gave when it first arrived that reminds me of the bitterness that makes the sweet so much more enjoyable. Losses can be swished around the maw like cheap bourbon until the bite comes off and they can finally be choked down; grudgingly, I can get that miserable taste out of my mouth and, though it burns the throat and leaves a wicked aftertaste, it is at least I know that it will go away.
Sunday brings pleasure to its completion and conclusion; joy does not last forever, but it can be brought to a more enduring form: contentment. Sunday brings pain to its completion and conclusion; disappointment does not last forever, because eventually we can come to realize that life has gone on and we will too.
Sundays are for reading the newspaper and soaking up every article online and gathering stats and waiting anxiously for the polls to arrive. But there are only so many articles to read and highlights to watch and, eventually, it is time to move on. So we do and we are better for it.
Sundays are for avoiding the newspaper, skipping the sports website and dreading how far the team dropped after the loss. But there a lot of hours in Sunday and, as the hours pass on, the sickening feeling fades and it is time for the postmortem. So we soak it in, analyze what went wrong, gripe to ourselves or join our significant other for some cleansing co-griping, and then it is time to move on. So we do and we are better for it.
It is joy's denouement and pain's remission. It is a day of bringing emotions to their final resting place. It is the day that finishes Saturday. And for the college football fan, it is a day when college football is given the gift of philosophy and it is an even greater game for it.