My Favorite College Football Games, a retrospective

Hi, friends, loyal frustrated followers, and random, confused people! As you know or as the name implies, this is a movie blog, first and foremost, always has been, always will be. Still, we have, as loyal frustrated followers know, allowed space for digressions during the Summer and Winter Olympics because your humble, moronic correspondent is an Olympics Devotee, through and through, even while acknowledging the Games’ myriad grave sins. But if the Olympics are my predominant jam, my preferred year-round sport is college football. And as last college football season concluded, I found myself suffering something of an existential crisis in relation to it, not so much from the dubious motivations of the NCAA nor the vicious, injury-prone nature of football itself, though those have tormented me for some time, but from college football’s shifting structure. Even if the game has become as imaginative and free-wheeling as ever, conference realignment and the emergent playoff have transformed the sport into something more homogenized and national, more NFL-y, betraying the anarchic, regional roots that made me fall in love with it. But I don’t want to get into that here. And I don’t want to stop loving college football. I want to remember why I love college football in the first place. So. This fall, only on Saturday, starting next Saturday and continuing each Saturday hence for the duration of the 2019 college football regular season, I will be blogging about my favorite college football games.

1.) These will, understand, please, not in any way, shape or form, not in any capacity whatsoever, be the “best” college football games. God, no. There are hundreds of lists purporting to decree the “best” college football games. Go read those. No, these are merely my favorites, for various reasons, all of which I will outline in the posts.

2.) These games are not and will not be ranked. That’s nonsense. I love them all equally. They will be posted in something approximating spiritual order.

3.) These posts will not be of interminable length, I promise, pinkie swear. These posts will be 500-600 words long, and nothing at all like blow-by-blow recaps, generally forgoing stats and such, just brief reminiscences about why these games mean so much to me.

4.) These posts, to assuage the fears of those who know me best, will not include any games involving my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers. This is not about them. I know why I still love them. This is about remembering why I still love college football.

If this exercise interests you, by all means, stick with us this fall through Saturday, please and thank you. If this does not interest you, ye gods, do I get it, no hard feelings, none at all, and feel free to remain on our traditional Monday-Friday schedule, ignoring Saturday. But just understand how much I want to do this, how much I need to do this, how excited I am to do this, and how I cannot wait to do this. Onward.