On college football, partisanship and guardrails

Contrary to what you may think based on my Twitter volume — 84,000 Tweets and counting! — I am pretty careful about what I post on social media. The universal truth that “everything you post online is available for everyone to see, forever” struck a chord with me early in my Internet life, and I’ve tried to heed it. 

You may notice, for example, that I very rarely curse online, a conscious choice despite my real-life love of a good swear. I avoid criticizing the work of colleagues, because there is nothing dumber than a media beef. I try to be thoughtful and avoid spouting off at the mouth with things I may regret saying. 

Of course, I fail at this at times, and I’m sure there is a fair amount of social media posts I’d like back. But generally, I think my guardrails are prudent.

Another one of those guardrails: I avoid talking politics.

That’s not to say I’m apolitical; I’d say half of my daily reading is to keep up-to-date on the news, which inevitably means I have thoughts. But it became evident to me a long time ago that when it comes to discussing politics, the juice is not worth the squeeze. People are too dug in on their own thoughts, and the conversations can — and do! — spiral out of control in a hurry.

Which leads us to college football.

A fair amount of my job requires me to talk about college football. What a life, right? I get paid to think and talk about sports! I’m extremely lucky in that regard, and I try to go about it in a thoughtful, considerate way.

But more and more, I’ve noticed that college football and politics are nearly indistinguishable from one another. College football fans are notoriously rabid in their support of their favorite team, moreso than any sport this side of English soccer. I’m not quite sure why this is — perhaps because of the money paid to be affiliated with these institutions? — but it’s palpable. And with that, college football has largely descended into the same disingenuous partisan bickering that has made politics and religion third-rail topics. 

A criticism of a college football team, however rooted in facts and data, is seemingly inevitably met with a wave of backlash from the fans of that team. In many cases, a compliment of a college football team can be even worse — not only do rivals take umbrage, but fans will often chide you for not being complimentary enough of their favorite team.

To make matters worse, discussion of college football leads to the particularly insidious accusation of bias — you’re only saying that because you’re secretly a fan of another team! And while the Internet has exacerbated this problem, it’s nothing new — Dave Campbell, the 93-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine for which I work, famously says that he has been accused of being a graduate of every school in the Southwest Conference.

The increasingly partisan nature of college football discourse is fueled in part by the rise of team-specific sites who hyper-focus on an individual program. The very nature of the business model makes for a feedback loop — you’re here because you think your team is great, here are all the ways that your team is great, now let’s hop on the message board to continue to discuss all the ways in which our team is great! I have many friends who work for these sites, and they do excellent work; that said, it’s hard not to look at many of these sites as state-run media for a particular partisan bent.

The net result of the increasing partisan nature of college football makes it increasingly difficult to have intellectually honest discussion of the sport. Having an opinion requires you to thread the needle, lest you be painted as a partisan yourself. It’s all very tiresome.

I still discuss politics in private with friends, but keep my thoughts largely out of public view, because it’s simply not worth the venom it often produces. With partisanship beginning to rule college football in the same way, I can’t help but feel I’ll treat that topic with similar discretion in the future.