Friday 40-Yarder: College Football Week 2 Starts with The Red Bandanna Game and The Border War

Too many people have forgotten the soul of the college football season not even two weeks into the season.

It does not come from lawsuits. LSU and the SEC need to resolve their posturing behind closed doors like adults.

It does not come from TV ratings. Anyone upset Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame did not garner a bigger Week 1 rating because Mississippi vs. Louisville was on at the same time is cheering for the wrong numbers.

For that matter, it does not come from the cost of broadcast rights, even if for the second time in five seasons the powers-that-be are spending time in September loudly considering expanding the College Football Playoff in the future. It may be worth debating 12 or 16 or 24 teams, but how about we don’t ponder it between weekends filled with football?

The soul of college football comes from joy.

You can sit in the nosebleeds furious that someone is getting outcoached, or you can focus on the six-year-old light enough to be tossed into the air after every touchdown, his joyful cackles drowned out only by neighbors’ cheering.

Your bet’s closing line value is not worth what those laughs are, even if closing line value is a necessary measuring stick for a responsible gambler.

The soul of college football comes from community.

25 years ago today, former Boston College lacrosse player Welles Crowther lost his life while guiding countless others out of the South Tower during the Sept. 11 attacks. For more than a decade now, Boston College has honored Crowther each season with a “Red Bandanna Game,” one of the more distinctive moments of pageantry in a sport built on them.

Poignant memories made alongside friends remembering the same sacrifice builds the type of community too many people lose when they chase social media followers like they are announcing inflated attendance numbers.

The soul of college football comes from hate.

The Kansas Jayhawks are not so much nicknamed after birds as they are after the slavery abolitionists, “Jayhawkers,” who argued Kansas should enter the Union as a free state and struck out against Missouri’s pro-slavery stance. The hatred between the two states reached its scalding point when Missouri guerillas killed 150-200 people in Lawrence in Quantrill's Raid during the Civil War.

The No. 23 Missouri Tigers have not played in Lawrence in more than two decades, the Border War too often spending time in Kansas City. Lawrence welcomes their return tonight, glad to remind Missouri it often wears gray just as Confederate soldiers did.

This rivalry is, to pull from a Gilbert Brown voiceover in a hype video released Thursday, “built on something that’s deeper than just school pride. It’s fueled by hatred passed down through generations. Our roots reach back to the Civil War, when blood was spilt over what you believed in and which side you stood on.

“There are heroes and villains. Only allegiance decides their legacy. There’s right and wrong. There’s Kansas and Missouri.”

You forget the soul of college football when focusing on the line movement, favoring Missouri by a full touchdown a week ago and now doing so by only 5.5 points, spending some of the week as low as -4.5. Brown was not thinking about a point spread with that thought of, “There’s right and wrong. There’s Kansas and Missouri.”

He was thinking of a Kansas outright victory (+180 via DraftKings) on Friday night.

You miss the soul of college football when too surprised Rutgers is a 3-point underdog (-107 via Caesars) at Boston College on Friday night.

You ignore the soul of college football when unsatisfied by a 21-point win and insisting it should be 28 points. No. 3 Notre Dame’s second- and third-string quarterbacks should lessen that stress for you on Saturday as 44.5-point favorites (-110 via FanDuel) against Rice. (It would be more accurate to describe Noah Grubbs as 2A and Teddy Jarrad as 2B, though those designations could flip by October, hence each likely trying to impress in second-half action of a blowout of the Owls.)

The soul of college football comes from joy, community and hate.

Perhaps Lane Kiffin embodies that exact cocktail all on his own.

Play Neck.
Drink Malört.