I Want to Get Excited for The 2021 College Football Season

College football is supposed to be back “home” in 2021, but my fandom hasn’t recovered from 2020.

College football has been my favorite sport for as long as I’ve been watching sports. One of the first memories I have of watching sports was the fall of 1988, when I was six, and my Notre Dame alum Dad was celebrating their wins over Miami and then West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to win the national title.

Every August since has been spent reading preview magazines, going over the first week schedules, and counting down the minutes until it returned. But something changed in 2020, when COVID ripped apart any and all fantasies I had about why I loved college football so much.

College football had become a blatant money grab well before 2020, but the confluence of events caused by the pandemic crystallized the fact that, yes, college football was always that gross. I barely paid attention to the 2020 season. Too many games were canceled. Too many players got COVID. The bowl season was a farce. The title game was a joke. I just wanted it to end.

I wrongly assumed I’d be right back to my 2019 levels of excitement in 2021 when fans returned and COVID largely receded. Well, COVID has largely receded where I live, and I’ve been to baseball games and horse racing events since…