Ain't Nothin' But a Family Thing

I first discovered college football when I was 7.

I'm sure I had seen games before that, because I knew the rules and followed the action fairly easily. But the first game I remember watching -- really watching, start to finish -- was the 1982 Orange Bowl. My dad grew up in Nebraska, but as a military family the only time we got to watch the Cornhuskers play was when they played a) Oklahoma or b) in a bowl game. In our house, the Nebraska-Oklahoma game had its own batch of traditions -- the "guys vs. girls" division of rooting, Mom putting her Sooners hat on top of the TV. But the first time I really noticed how much fun college football could be was New Year's Night, 1982. Clemson vs. Nebraska. Mom & Dad both watched the game and, for the first time, let me stay up all the way to the end.

Pretty cool when you're seven.

Over the years my college football fandom has been what could be best described as a "lovers' quarrel." There's a lot not to like, most of which centers around the letters E, N, P, and S. You can probably guess what order those letters belong in. From the MNC -- "Meaningless National Championship" -- to all manner of Heisman Trophy controversies to the sham that is the BCS, the sport makes it hard to be a fan if you don't have a rooting interest in one particular team. In 2007, I set a record for fewest games watched in a season -- three.

But that said, I still love the game. Thanksgiving wasn't as interesting this year as it was in the Switzer-Osborne days, but I still found myself holding my breath when Nebraska launched that 57-yard FG to beat Colorado. Vanderbilt's first trip to a bowl game in 26 years has made for an interesting season watching their fans. In fact, I have the Music City Bowl open in another window right now as I'm writing this. The Big XII South controversy, though, reminded me why I didn't miss the game last year.

Now to be fair, college basketball has a lot of problems, most of which (again) stem from those four letters. Money teams from money conferences dominate the game. Period. They draw eyeballs to TV's. They sell tickets. And they get the vast majority of the spots in the NCAA tournament. Last year, schools that spent $2 million or more on men's basketball got 32 of 34 at-large bids.

But Sunday night, none of that mattered.

Sunday night, I was the Dad, introducing the team I love playing the game I love to my own 6-year-old. My daughter Erica had seen enough basketball to understand the basics; players try to put the ball in the hoop, how far away you are determines how many points you get, and the team in white usually wins. Erica has had her moments with basketball before. Last year she picked Memphis to make the national championship game, and when they did, she won our annual family basketball picking contest.

But Sunday night, for the first time in four years, Erica and I were in front of a TV while Lipscomb was playing on the screen.

Speaking of lovers' quarrels. When Lipscomb made the move to NCAA Division I, I was among many alumni who sounded the alarm that this might not be the best of ideas. In the last eleven years, the entire athletic department has produced maybe half a dozen winning seasons. Lipscomb, once a small-college athletic juggernaut, had jumped into the deep end and was constantly getting its head pushed under the water by the bigger, cooler kids. Even in the section of the pool reserved for the little guys, Lipscomb was a punching bag. Sure, there was the occasional highlight (taking Belmont to overtime in the conference title game the NIT year, volleyball and baseball making the NCAA tournament), but for the better part of the last decade being a Lipscomb fan has not been too terrible much fun.

But like it or not, Lipscomb is my school. I met my wife there. Her parents both went there. In college, I helped out making game tapes for the women's basketball team. Lipscomb basketball is in my blood, and in Erica's DNA.

Sunday night, Lipscomb played at Indiana. The game was on the Big Ten Network, and since we were visiting my parents in Arkansas we got to watch the game live. We cmae home from church expecting to see the typical major vs. mid-major score, only to find Lipscomb ahead -- ahead, I tell you -- early in the second half. The last fifteen minutes of the game, neither team led by more than four. That is, not until Jimmy Oden hit two free throws to put the Bisons up 5 in the last 10 seconds.

I remember being a seven-year-old, seeing how excited my Dad was to watch his team play in a bowl game. Even though Nebraska lost the game -- forcing my Dad, the writing staff of Jeopardy, and the rest of Husker Nation to wait another 12 years for their MNC -- I'll never forget what it was like to watch my Dad as his team took the lead on Clemson in the second quarter. It's a memory I will treasure until the day I die.

Sunday night -- when the final horn went off, my hands went in the air, and I yelled loudly enough to set off the Christmas tree -- a six-year-old little girl got to see her Daddy celebrate. Maybe one day she will look back on that night the same way I remember that Orange Bowl.

Even though the guys in the white shirts lost.