Seven days to go

Let's get it straight right now. Girls do like football, particularly college football. Girls who say they don't like football don't realize that it is a vehicle for grilled meat products and Bloody Marys and beer and wearing cute t-shirts to support their colleges. Girls who say they don't like grilled meat products and beer are not worth your time.

And so, because I know so many girls who like college football and claim to want to hear my musings on the subject, I'm going to write a blog on the subject. I was raised on college football, waking up every Saturday morning to watch it (Oregon, so it came on at 9 a.m.).

I should state here, right up front, that this is not a bias-free blog about college football. I have some pretty serious opinions about teams, mostly the ones I hate.

So let's check off the teams I don't like, and that I will give only grudging respect this season and only if they really really deserve it:

--USC
--Ohio State
--Florida
--Miami
--Michigan
--Wake Forest (one of these things is not like the other. I'll explain, I promise)

Teams I will root for openly and with heartache, no doubt:

--Boston College
--Virginia Tech
--Notre Dame (again, I'll explain. I promise)

Some background: I attended Boston College, and my sister-in-law attended VTech and I went to many Tech games to watch the Eagles get served up a massive ass-whooping. I grew up in a Notre Dame family. Like, the whole family. I have a love-hate relationship with their football team, although these days there's just not that much to bother hating. They've lost to Boston College for what, six consecutive years? They still manage to feel really really superior to my school, which I find amusing. But I do love them, and unless they're playing BC I'm going to root for them.

I live in Oregon, and not anywhere near a place that would hold a major football stadium. When you live among Ducks and Beavers, here's what you hear a lot of: oh this is the big year! This is finally our time!

Let me break it to those fans. No it isn't. It just isn't. The Ducks will lose at least three games, as usual, and wear ridiculous uniforms with silver wings on the shoulders and show up to games wearing all the colors of the rainbow but their own. The Beavers meanwhile will knock off a team or two that are decent, then lose to someone worthless like Hawaii. It's just what they do.

And if you wonder why I hate Wake Forest, it stems from being tricked into attending a friendly Boston College football event on a Saturday night in New York City in 2006 which turned out to be held at a Wake Forest bar (are there such things? Who knew?) and which featured the most obnoxiously lame group of girls I've ever sat next to. It culminated in the Eagles' second loss of the season, and a subsequent near fist-fight between a small girl with an ugly boyfriend and myself.

If you learn one thing from this blog, it will be that I dislike girls who claim to like and understand football, but do this only for boys' sakes. I don't understand why people date these girls.

And don't get me started on USC. That requires another post entirely.