Two Minutes on College Football by Andy Rooney

So after I watched Charlie Weis' piece on 60 Minutes last night, I stuck around and caught Andy Rooney's segment on "What's the Deal With Cities With Crazy Names?" And, of course, inspiration struck. That's the kind of hard-hitting journalism we need here at the House Rock Built! A few e-mail exchanges later, and Andy politely agreed to guest blog about college football. Here is his (the consiglieri informed me this would be a good time to disclose this is fully made up and completely not Andy Rooney, since he's a bit touchy about internet wackos ripping off his image) totally real and not at all phony bit on college football: Enjoy!

-fightinamish

By Andy Rooney Famous reporter and crusty curmudgeon.

Two Minutes on College Football

College football is a game played by collegians. In France, when you talk about "football", they assume you mean a bunch of fruitcakes with long hair and mustaches kicking around a round ball. It's probably best not to start an argument with a Frenchman over this, because it will only lead to further frustration.

Some teams have nicknames. Some are Lions, some are Bears. Some are Nittanies or Bruins, which are just needlessly fancy ways of saying Lions and Bears.

You don't get one point each time you score, each time it's worth something different. Sometimes you get six points, sometimes you get three points, and still other times, for no reason at all, you get an "extra point".

Have you noticed that there are some coaches like Joe Paterno who are very very old? Then, there are other coaches like Pat Fitzgerald who are very young. However, most of the coaches in football fall somewhere between those two in terms of age.

Every conference thinks that they're the best, and even the teams that aren't in a conference think they're better than teams that are in a conference. Since it's not possible for all of them to be right, it's very likely that none of them are.

And doesn't it seem strange that every college football team is composed of dozens of full-grown adult coaches and several dozen college students, and yet for some reason they're all obsessed with "impressing" a bunch of "computers". With all the education on those sidelines, you'd think somebody would point out the implicit absurdity of that very train of thought.

Football is a physical, agressive sport, and sometimes the players get into fights. When things get really heated, a player will take off his helmet and swing it around. Does it strike you as strange that their first instinct is to remove their most vital piece of safety equipment? I don't care if you're out of ammo in a foxhole, the last thing you'd want to use as a weapon is your bulletproof vest.

I've been told that they don't sell beer in college stadiums, so I probably wouldn't want to go to a game. However, I'm also told that people drink it in the parking lots, so there are clearly two sides to every issue.