So long ago, far away.

When I was a kid — As the Tap would say, “In ancient times hundreds of years before the dawn of history” — intercollegiate athletics was, well, quaint actually. At least given what’s going on these wacko days.

Pardon my sentimental journey for a sec to the mid 50s in the Way Back Machine.

Here’s how you’d find out about college football teams and players and schedules. Your dad would bring home some little pamphlet he’d gotten off the counter at Bonnycastle Drugs or Spangler’s Shell or the hardware store.

There’d be all the above noted and results and maybe a story or two. Sometime wondrous little factoids in smaller print at the bottom of the page. (When you are an budding adolescent sports addict, the threshold for wondrous is low.)

One I particularly remember had a couple of pages in the back with outlines of all the big stadiums. Not seating charts, just the shape, their footprints. Which I memorized. For years, I could identify a line drawing of Camp Randall.

One game a week on the grainy black and white TV. Lindsey Nelson or Chris Schenkel on the call. Being impatient, I’d hate when the game was late afternoon, and have to wait so long for kickoff. Except of course for the Rose Bowl because there would be the Cotton or Orange earlier on New Year’s Day.

I’d sit mesmerized watching post game score shows. SMU vs. TCU seemed so mysterious, exotic. Where were these schools? Horned Frogs vs. Mustangs.

So long ago, so far away.

So hard to talk about now. Continue reading Whither College Sports? →