It's Just Personal.
Happy Rivalry Week
Our family room still had its old red leather sofa, worn down from the years of memories seeped into its skin. Warm light came off the standing lamp in the corner, its glow illuminating the room. It was a Saturday night, we were all standing, eyes glued to the TV. I followed the ball, then the returner. He moved swiftly, weaving his way through defenders. 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50. He danced the edge of the sideline, doing his best Fred Astaire impression, ever so close to touching the white, but never staying on anything but on the green. Breaking free he ran into the promised land, and the sea of blue and orange welcomed him home.
I wish I could say that from that moment I knew this sport was something special, but I was 10. As I got back into college football years later, I realized that this sport had a quality that no professional one could ever touch, something about it was personal.
For the fans, maybe it is living on that campus, passing by that stadium every day on your way to class and breathing in the same air as those athletes. It could be the free tailgate food and the 70,000 of your fellow day drunk early-twenty year olds, or the fact that your great-grandparents met there, and three decades of family members have attended since. Years of wearing that name across your chest and before you even knew what it stood for, you were apart of it. Something about that school was yours.
For the athletes, maybe it’s being on the field, feeling so charged, as if every game, down, and snap you are fighting for your last breath; the last chance to prove yourself before the flame dies out. If you make that one play, maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance for something greater.
The moment you as a player put on that uniform, you are a part of something bigger than yourself. Irish, Trojan, Tiger, Wolverine, Bulldog, Buckeye, etched across your chest, you are one of them now, and there is weight that comes with it. Decades upon decades of alumni across the world hope and pray that this team will win every week. They attended this school, sat in the same classrooms as you, cheered in the stadium you play in, and cried in the dorm room you live in. Years of triumph, pain, and heartbreak lay in those threads, and now you have the power to continue the drought or be the bringer of rain. Maybe that’s why, it feels more personal.
The columniation of this power lies in rivalry week, the ultimate test of pride and responsibility. There is no moment greater than that of week 13. Everything you have ever worked for and dreamt of has lead up to this moment; the grandest of stages and the brightest of lights. As you step out onto that field, centuries of hate between these teams lays so thick in there air you could cut it with a knife. It boils under your skin, soaking into your jersey and cementing itself onto your bones. Jeers and cheers coincide in the stadium, simultaneous love and hatred by thousands; an ambivalent responsibility, the hero and the villain.
Your only hope is to do justice to that name across your chest, the thousands cheering for you, the coaches and teammates you run alongside. The responsibility of representing those people lays in your hands, and now’s the moment: bring the rain.
