The Odyssey has been in a dark place in 2022 as instant transfers, NIL and destructive conference realignments have all eroded our deep love of college football. If ever a sport needed a czar who could act for the benefit of college football……The rich do not always need to get richer (at the risk of sounding like Bernie Sanders).
However, last Friday brightened our mood. We were in Fort Collins and had not had a chance to see Canvas Stadium in person. One of the Ram football players let me in to view a charming 41,000 stadium that returned CSU games to an on-campus site in 2017. With San Diego State’s new stadium debuting on September 3 against Arizona, the Mountain West can now brag about having two of the coolest lower-capacity stadiums in the country.
When I said some brief hellos to a number of the CSU players as they entered the stadium, I was talking to them about being in the Big House in 15 days. They were smiling and uniformly enthusiastic about their opener. Their enthusiasm washed off on me. The Odyssey is in love with college football again. While the author is an unabashed University of Michigan fan (partly due to two degrees), let’s hope these CSU players have some big moments in Ann Arbor.