Division III Ramblings

Well, summer is coming to a close and that means soon, the college football season will be here. The college football season is also known as Pee Your Pants Time in Texas. While the season is going, it is no big deal to see a UT fan and a Texas A&M fan, battling to the death out in the parking lot of a Wendy's because one besmirched the punt coverage of the other's team. And who is that climbing up on the roof in order to shang-hai them both with a napkin dispenser? It's a Texas Tech fan. Meanwhile, the Baylor fan is wondering how he can channel the killer rage of the basketball team into a football team that is capable of more than wetting its pants continuously.

At the same time all of this is going on, there is another group of Texas football fans that no one pays attention to: the division III people. My alma mater is a division III school, so every weekend, I could count on us taking the fearsome squad of the Dungeons and Dragons Council of Wabasha Community College. The games were high-spirited affairs, much like division I games. The only difference was the players. While in Division I games, you could could count on seeing the future stars of the NFL battle it out. In Division III games, you can look forward to seeing the future Accounts Receivable manager of your local tire factory pull his groin while diving for a pass.

I suppose the fans are different too. In a DI game, there'll be a lot of people painted up, screaming obscenities and wishing for a painful death for the opposing team. Also, you are likely to have a lot of the players' illegitimate children cheering them on. That is not the norm with division III fans. I will give you an example of a typical DIII crowd in order to juxtapose these two groups. In the fall of 1999, Trinity was playing in the play-offs against some Lutheran school from the Northwest. I was at this game with some friends, and we noticed shortly after kick-off that the opposing fans all seemed to be holding hands. Hmm, intriguing. A few minutes later, they started singing hymns. It was Vacation Bible School with pads out there. The hand holding and testifying went on the entire game, thus propelling their team on to victory. It was pretty interesting stuff, but it was made all the more interesting that no one was really surprised by it.

And so, I beg you readers to take a break from the heavyweights of college football. They don't need your support. Call up your local Air Conditioning Repair School and ask them who they're playing. If you're persistent enough, they may let you be quarterback. If you can't appreciate the beauty of sports built around that, then you are a damn fool.

Posted by Cody at August 21, 2003 5:41 PM