Football Factories

Today is the day I've been waiting for since last September. The USC and Texas are playing in the Rose Bowl game starting at 5:00 tonight. These are my two favorite college football teams and have been for years.

When I was 18 and playing college football at Cal State Hayward (in the mid 1970's), the other receivers and I would pretend we were playing for USC. Everytime we'd score a touchdown in practice, we'd start singing the USC fight song. Lot's of people would refer to USC as a football factory and insinuate that they had bought their team by giving football scholarships to players that didn't qualify for admission academically. We would here that and think "lucky bastards". They were playing in front of 60,000 people every week and we had, maybe, 1,000. We always used the term football factory very affectionately.

Several years later, in my second attempt to get through college, I was going to the University of Texas (that's a story for another day). It's a great school, with a fantastic engineering department. I used to park my car in the lot next to the football stadium and ride my bike to class from there. What an amazing structure. The difference between that stadium and where I played college ball was like comparing a T-ball field with a major league baseball stadium. You can't help but get caught up in school spirit in that kind of environment.

So, tonight is the national championship game between the school I used to pretend I attended, and one of the schools I did attend. I hope the game is half as good as the hype. I've rooted for one or the other to win the national championship every year for 30 years. But, in this case, I have to give the nod to the school I dreamed of playing for.

Go Trojans!!