The Evolution of College Football

When I was in college 60 years ago, I was a fanatical fan. I was lucky enough to attend a school that had good sports teams. In fact, they won their only National football championship while I was there. And while they have not repeated that feat, they have had National championships in both basketball and track and field (both men’s & women’s).

How has the sport changed since those days? In the 60’s, you wore a coat and tie to the game and only celebrated when your team scored. Players only had a restrained celebration after a touchdown. Now, many fans wear costumes and celebrate after every decent play, both offensive and defensive. The players do likewise and signal first downs for the refs. In my day, if a player made a good play, he hurried back to his position, getting ready for the next play. Good plays were the job, not a reason to celebrate. My high school coach once benched a player for getting too excited. He said, don’t act like you are something special. Yes, you made a nice play, but act as if you do it all the time.  

In those times, teams played 10 league games and hoped for an invitation to one of the 9  bowl games if they had an outstanding record. Top 4 bowls: The Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, the Orange Bowl in Miami, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The other 5: The Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, the Sun Bowl in El Paso, the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando & the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. Notice that 1/3 of the bowls were in Texas, and it was the time when the Southwest was a power conference, even though it was in reality the “Texas” conference plus Arkansas.

T-20 Cricket

Having lived in New Zealand from 2000 to 2009, I was forced to examine this sport. The classic version is “Test Cricket” where both teams don all white uniforms and spend up to 5 days playing, where in the end it is possible for there to be “no result”. I had trouble with this. I found the ODI (a 50-over limited one day International) version more tolerable, but 8 hours is still too long for my taste. That said, I was impressed with the athleticism displayed in the field where I witnessed many fantastic, bare-handed catches of the cricket ball, which is about the same size as a baseball and just as hard.

Since I departed NZ in 2009, a new version has been introduced. The T-20 version limits each side to 20 overs. An over is 6 balls thrown by a bowler. This version encourages more offensive action (higher runs per over) and typically lasts about 3 hours. It has become very popular.

I was in Mumbai recently for a couple of weeks during the 2026 T-20 World Cup. The TV coverage was of all the matches and also included repetitive highlights of each. I enjoyed them. I had plenty of time to watch it as well as some Olympic Coverage (via Peacock). I was there to have my new teeth installed after going 7 months without them.

Update. After New Zealand demolished South Africa and India, winning a close one over England, they met in the World Cup final. I was David (NZ) up against Goliath (India). In India Cricket is King, but in NZ Rugby is King followed closely by Americas cup sailing. Cricket is a distant 3rd in importance. The telling factor is that India has 500 times as many people!

However, this time Goliath was the victor.

Olympics Observations

As I mentioned in an earlier post I watched quite a bit of Olympic TV coverage during my two weeks in Mumbai. I have always been a fan of the Olympics. I was living in Canada in 1960 when the first miracle on ice occurred for the USA hockey team, and who could forget the 1980 version? As a fan and citizen of the USA, I have always rooted for my country’s team. Watching the 2026 event it occurred to me that I was also rooting for other countries. Having lived in Canada in my youth, I found myself rooting for their athletes, and since I am also a permanent resident of my adopted country,y New Zealand, of course, they have my support. Surprisingly, I found myself rooting for Norway, a country with 5.5 million residents (about the same size as New Zealand). Not only are they leading in both Gold & all the medal counts, but what is even more impressive is when you consider both counts on a per capita basis. It’s incredible. I’ll leave the math to you.

One other observation that occurs to me is that most of those athletes are attractive far beyond the norm. Since they are dedicated and hard working to even be participating, you would expect most to be physically fit, no surprise there. However, why do so many have attractive facial features? And among them, many would be considered very attractive. Does their attractiveness influence their self-image,e leading to assertiveness? Just a bit of speculation on my part.