College boys ready to bowl America over once again

NORMALLY the New York summer lingers like an unwanted late-night party straggler until just after the US Open champions are crowned in Queens.

But Tropical Storm Irene (née Hurricane) cracked the heat like no regular thunderstorm could ever hope to and sent autumn leaves tumbling ahead of schedule.

Unlike in Ireland where summer is a rumour and winter is always lurking like an all too obvious mugger, this is a season relished in America to a degree that is incomprehensible to our Western Europe sensibilities.

When the heat subsides, everyone seems to remember how good it feels to breathe again while for most of the sporting public, the countdown to their two branches of football begins in earnest.

First up is the college game which kicks off this weekend.

The core of the season, a succession of busy Saturdays, is done with before winter gets a chance to really bite, hence its association with mild weather.

Most of the more traditional rivalries in the various conferences are left until just after Thanksgiving. That’s when favourites for the national crown Oklahoma face Oklahoma State. It’s also when the two main institutions and sworn enemies in Florida, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Los Angeles come together to celebrate their hatred of each other.

Ohio State will travel to the 110,000-capacity ‘Big House’, home of their bitter enemies, the University of Michigan and then there’s the clash of South Carolina and Clemson back down south. The season builds towards these storied conflicts, intense derbies in all but name.

One rivalry, however, has an extra edge this season, as unwelcome as it is bizarre.

At Auburn University, home of the reigning national champions, Toomer’s Corner is where fans, students and alumni gather to celebrate football success, showering the great oaks that adorn the spot with toilet paper in a messy but treasured tradition.

Earlier this year, one Alabama fan, unhappy with his side succumbing to the local bragging rights to Auburn, decided to poison the trees, possibly fatally, before bragging about it on local sports radio and subsequently finding himself facing charges that carry the possibility of 10 years in prison.

Writing about this sad chain of events in Sports Illustrated recently, Tommy Tomlinson described the bitterness which led to Harvey Updyke’s costly encroachment on enemy territory.

“Think of those Russian nesting dolls,” he wrote. “College football has the most intense fans of any American sport. The (South East Conference in which both teams play) has the most intense fans in college football. The Auburn-Alabama rivalry has the most intense fans in the SEC. And the teams’ annual game — the Iron Bowl — is the most intense three hours of the sports calendar. It’s the hard, hot ember of a feud that burns all year long.”

Unfortunately for a sport which has been easing the passage to winter since the 19th century, the impending death of the Toomer’s oaks is at the lower end of a controversy-ridden off-season.

Anything even resembling an incentive aimed in the direction of an up-and-coming highschool prospect can lead to prohibitive sanctions. This is a world where a young man trying out for a college outfit can get an Athletics Director fired if they so much as accept a couch to sleep on at the apartment of potential team-mates as happened at the high-flying Boise State.

That’s not even the most frivolous transgression upon which the governing body, the NCAA, feels compelled to lay down the law. Among rule changes proposed the other week was one which would begin allowing student-athletes to consume cream cheese, butter and peanut butter with their bagels.

At the other end of the scale is the University of Miami and somewhere in between is Ohio State.

The Ohio Buckeyes players are routinely faced with impossible expectations and overinflated status. When some of their players, including new Oakland Raiders recruit Terelle Pryor, sold trophies and memorabilia for tattoos and other miscellany, their legendary coach Jim Tressel looked the other way.

It cost him his coaching career and Pryor the opening five games of his first professional contract in what was an unprecedented coordination of punishment between the NFL and its supposedly wholesome little brother.

But it was nothing compared to what happened in Miami over the last decade where a Ponzi scheme operator, originally from Brooklyn and now serving 20 years in prison, used his fake money to buy players gifts, expensive dinners, access to VIP lounges in nightclubs, prostitutes and even an abortion.

The new season kicks off officially tomorrow night but the real action gets going on Saturday when dozens of iconic stadiums with capacities of anything up to 115,000 host colourful fanbases with many more watching on countless TV stations that have paid millions of dollars for the right to transmit the excitement.

Meanwhile, the young men putting their bodies on the line for the next few months are expected to honour their amateur status and accept education as their only reward.

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Twitter: JohnWRiordan