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Two ClayNation Canons that are important for every college football fan to memorize: 1. Simply being Catholic is not a reason that allows you to root for Notre Dame in college football. Period. It's just not. 2. The East Coast ruins everything in college football. Now we'll dive in for a handy dual canon exploration.
Of all the lame reasons people have written in to tell me why they root for a particular football team, being Catholic is the lamest. The only competition is from fans who choose a particular team because they like the colors. But unlike people who recognize how illegitimate that is, Notre Dame fans who are Catholic respond as if you've insulted their very being when you tell them their religion isn't a true proxy for football allegiance. Nine times of out 10, they'll just respond with the same argument all over again, as if you didn't hear them,
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| So what if you're Catholic? (Getty Images) |
So what? Most Americans are affiliated with a religion of one form or fashion. This isn't a gridiron theocracy. No one is debating the merits of sprinkling vs. full immersion at halftime while the marching bands play. Have I missed a papal decree when it comes to the canonical law of college football rooting? After all, this isn't Iraq, and we aren't choosing between Shiites and Sunnis when it comes time to select a third-and-7 passing route. No other denomination even pretends to make a claim for fan allegiance based on religious affiliation. But if you have the temerity to question this Notre Dame allegiance, you'll hear it once more:
"That's all well and good but, you see, I'm Catholic."
Yeah, I see. See that Notre Dame isn't the only Catholic football team in the country. Go ahead and admit you're a bandwagon fan who couldn't name a defensive player on Notre Dame if your life depended on it. (Saying Charlie Weis couldn't either is no defense.) Yet Notre Dame is the only Catholic school in the country that "fans" consistently reference when they state their religion.
Why don't Catholic fans line up behind Boston College or Georgetown or Fordham or any other Catholic school in America? The answer is pretty simple: because those teams don't win as often as Notre Dame. Go ahead and admit the reason you cheer for the Irish is because you're spineless and clueless about college football. And probably from the East Coast. In reality, Catholicism has nothing to do with the legitimacy of your fandom. Unfortunately, most fellow fans just let this rationale pass as valid. No longer.
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| Notre Dame isn't the only Catholic football team in the country. (Getty Images) |
Last year you would have thought the Irish were close to taking down the Chicago Bears as we entered the season -- what with their epic loss to USC in November 2005 and all. Please tell me if you've ever heard more congratulations extended about a loss. It seriously got to the point where Notre Dame was getting more praise for losing than it would have gotten if it had actually won. Who was fueling all these stories? I'll tell you: East Coast idiots who root for Notre Dame and East Coast media who have no clue about other college football teams.
Which brings us to the ClayNation East Coast blame canon. Honestly, despite my ongoing feud with Pac-10 fans, I think you can pretty much trace every problem in college football to the Northeast. Plain and simple, people from the Northeast have no clue when it comes to college football and shouldn't be allowed to have any say in the eventual national champion or the Heisman Trophy.
Yet they end up deciding everything because people in the rest of the country care so much about college football that they embrace their regional heroes. Think about this for a minute -- rabid and knowledgeable fans from across the country end up outsourcing the selection of the national champion and the Heisman Trophy to the voting region that knows the least about the sport. This is the rough equivalent of letting Miss Teen South Carolina determine American policy in the Middle East.
Yep, geography rules when it comes to college football. People in the South are mad for the SEC and the ACC, people in the West are crazy for the Pac-10, and the center of the country is fertile ground for the Big 12 and Big 10. Leaving the Northeast with, wait for me, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers and Connecticut to hoist the college football pennant. So what do East Coast football fans do? They root for Notre Dame. If Notre Dame isn't any good, they don't pay attention at all. Yet, via the ridiculous method college football adopts to select its champions, these idiot fans -- who are still convinced the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Eagles is a true rivalry -- end up making choices for the rest of the country about who the best college football team in America is by driving media coverage to their overrated darlings.
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| Would the Dolphins still pass on Brady Quinn if he won a Heisman? (Getty Images) |
Which is why I'm calling on all of you to call out your friends, neighbors, cohorts and Fantasy football buddies when they say they root for Notre Dame's football team because they're Catholic. It's time to draw the line and establish that religion is not a basis for college football fandom. You can treat college football as a religion, but your team can't be a proxy for your religion. Maybe then, slowly, we can end the East Coast's stranglehold on deciding who the best college football teams in the country are.
All about the details
I just got around to watching Bryant Gumbel's interview with Pacman Jones on HBO's Real Sports this weekend. When Gumbel said, "Did you make it rain?" with a completely straight face, I absolutely lost it. How has this moment not gotten more attention? I went back and watched it like five times. It just got better and better. It was the seriousness in Gumbel's voice, like he was asking George W. Bush whether his eavesdropping authority was constitutional. If you haven't watched this interview, watch it. Especially when Pacman turns into Bill Clinton in responding to the question: "I threw a couple of dollars. Depends on what you clarify as making it rain." Like Pacman, I'm aware that making it rain is all about clarifying the details. Otherwise you might just be making it drizzle.
The Henry Bunch
Has Shawn Kemp been unfairly maligned? The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that Travis Henry has nine kids by nine different women. They're located in four states. To top it off, Henry had to borrow money from the Tennessee Titans last year to pay his child support so he wasn't arrested. But NFL players are role models, right? After all, Henry's lawyer was quoted in the article as saying, "I know these are a lot of kids, and there might be some questions about it, but he's a really committed father."
Of course he is. There are plenty of great fathers who have nine illegitimate kids by nine different women in four different states.
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Clay Travis is the author of Dixieland Delight: A Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference, available July 31, 2007, from HarperCollins. Called "as indispensable to college football fans as ibuprofen on Sunday morning" by Warren St. John, the New York Times' best selling author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, Dixieland Delight is Travis' hilarious, loving, irreverent and endlessly entertaining chronicle of a world that goes a little crazy on football Saturdays.
