THE FINAL 20 DAYS: 20

by WCT, The Ship of Fools

The longest off-season in sports is almost over and we are psyched. Today is August 8th, meaning there are now exactly 20 days until the beginning of College Football season.

To comemorate this, we are counting down the 20 (or so) things that make College Football so addictive that it gets us up out of our beds and into a bar at 12 noon on fall Saturdays. Today's edition: If some is good, more is better.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I find something thats good, I like to be overwhealmed by it. Why have a 12 oz. steak when you can eat a 24 oz. one? Why purchase a 12 of Miller Lite when you can get a whole case? This rule applies to football as well. There is no "law of diminishing returns" for football. 1 game is good, 5 games is better, 50 games is even better. But it is rare that you find yourself literally surrounded by a sport, except with College Football.

College Football does this in a way that no other sport can, and it does it every single weekend. With 119 teams in D-1A, and almost every single one of them playing between 12 noon and 12 midnight Eastern time on Saturdays, you can be surrounded by football for 12 hours if you are lucky enough to have a strategically placed bar stool and an iron liver.

You know the euphoria you feel on that first Thursday of the NCAA Tournament, when you skip school/work and settle in for non-stop basketball? College Football gives you this, and it gives it to you every week. The NFL is great, but with 32 teams, and 4 of them playing either Sunday night or Monday night, that means that there are only 14 game split between 1 pm and 7:30 pm Sundays. Not nearly enough!

So if you are like me, then you wake up every single Saturday in the fall like a kid on Christmas morning. Thats because you know you are going to be immersed in football for virtually all of your waking hours that day, and that ain't bad.