Charlotte Wilder's 16 takeaways from nine college football games in 10 weeks

By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

This fall, I lived the dream of many sports fans: I went to nine college football games in 10 weeks. 

The Ultimate College Football Road Trip, sponsored by Dos Equis, went something like this each week: My wonderful FOX Sports crew and I would land in a new place Wednesday afternoon, then spend all day Thursday and Friday morning shooting features, posting behind-the-scenes videos on social media and learning as much as we could about the place. We’d host a live show in a bar Friday night, then shoot more features at tailgates and the actual game every Saturday. We’d fly home Sunday, then do it all again three days later. 

It was an experience that I, a woman from New England who went to a Division III college, emerged from forever changed (and very tired). I now understand college football in a way I never could have without those trips. I finally fully comprehend the weight of rivalry week — and why many of your holiday weekends will be ruined if your team loses this week. 

Most of America gets that college football is a big deal. I also knew this: I’d written about it before this tour, covered games and followed the sport from an "I need to know what’s going on because this is my literal job" perspective. 

But I didn’t understand just how much it means to people. Because unless you went to one of these big college football schools, there is no way you can fully feel — that’s what the college football fan experience is about: feeling — how much cultural and personal significance it carries. 

So I went. Here’s what I learned.

1. Live mascots have better security than most celebrities.

Somehow (and by somehow, I mean, "because we deliberately sought them out"), I met every live mascot possible. I spent time with the ponies who pull the Sooner Schooner in Oklahoma ...

… with Mike the Tiger at LSU …

… with Miss Reveille the rough collie at Texas A&M …

… with Bevo the steer at his ranch near Austin, Texas …

… and, finally, with Uga the bulldog, who lives in Savannah, Georgia, but commutes to Athens for Georgia’s games.

I learned Bevo has a best friend, another steer named Two Spot, and they miss each other when they're not together. I learned Miss Reveille is the highest ranking member of the corps of cadets at A&M and if she jumps on her handler’s bed, he has to sleep in hers for the night. I learned Mike does not purr but, rather, "chuffs" when he’s happy. I learned Boomer and Sooner are both girls and they have a friend named 700, who is a 21-year-old blind horse. 

Like the schools themselves, all of these animals are very different. But they have one thing in common: The levels of secrecy surrounding their locations are akin to those afforded to the president of the United States. My producer was not allowed to send the location to anyone else, so I found myself being driven to the middle of nowhere and miraculously ending up, in the case of the ponies and Bevo, at beautiful, sprawling ranches that are home to the most famous animals in the state. 

No one is being paranoid with this level of security: The people who care for these animals just want to be sure fans of rival teams don’t show up and mess with the precious mascots. Decades ago, Tulane fans cut the lock on Mike's then-less-fortified cage. 

It was moving to watch students such as the RUF/NEKS (basically cowboys of Oklahoma) and Silver Spurs (basically cowboys of Texas) take care of their animals with such tenderness. They are living, breathing traditions, and they’re treated with reverence. 

2. Anything can happen. 

Some people said the Ultimate College Football Road Trip was a curse because the home teams often lost when we were visiting. But then we went to the A&M-Alabama game, and the unranked team from Texas upset the juggernaut. 

That outcome proved that a) no, we weren’t a curse b) anything can happen in college football and c) college football is the best.

3. Everyone hates Texas.

A&M’s fight song is literally "saw ‘em off," meaning "saw the horns off of Bevo." I find this very nasty, especially given that the Aggies have their own live mascot, so they should know better.

But my point is that even though they haven’t been in the same conference in a while (though that will soon change), a core part of A&M’s identity is hating Texas. Same with Oklahoma’s — I’ve never seen more horns down in my life than at the Norman bar where we put on the live show. 

And the Sooners were playing Nebraska that week! Nebraska has nothing to do with Texas!

4. Texas doesn’t care. 

Look, when your school is in Austin, your hand signal is the literal "rock on" sign, you’ve got a 2,000-pound animal in your stadium, and Matthew McConaughey is your ambassador of culture (or whatever), you don’t really care what anyone else thinks about you.

Even if your football team sucks.

5. College football pranks hit differently.

I can’t think of another sport in which something as innocent as a rubber duck could be such a burn after a loss. Sorry, Ohio State. Better luck next time.

6. The song from "Mrs. Doubtfire" is a lot more than the soundtrack to one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.

I didn’t know this until I got there, but in Wisconsin, the song "Jump Around" by House of Pain plays a huge role in the game-day experience. When the song came on before the fourth quarter, the entire place went bananas. I could feel the vibrations in my feet as I danced and jumped along with the thousands of people in the crowd.

After two years of not being able to have a communal experience, something as silly as a bunch of people rockin’ out to the song from "Mrs. Doubtfire" felt euphoric. To quote Joni Mitchell, who I’m sure is a fan of House of Pain, "You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone."

7. Sousaphones are extremely heavy.

That’s it.

8. Football players aren’t the only athletes at football games.

The pomp and circumstance that surrounds college football doesn’t just happen. People make it happen. Other student-athletes are the reason the sport feels more organic and varied than any pro league — students make up the dance teams, cheerleading teams, baton twirlers and bands that become the beating heart of the fan experience.

Take the Tiger Girls, the nationally ranked dance team at LSU, with which I was lucky enough to train. It’s one of the more diverse teams in the country, and the dancers welcomed me with open arms, going as far as to teach me a routine. (Which was a real feat because I’m not a dancer — sure, I’ll tear up a wedding reception, but it’s not going to look good.)

The biggest rushes I experienced this fall were thanks to marching bands. I stood at the goal post before the Wisconsin band ran onto the field, and I don’t really have words to describe it.

I felt like a celebrity because I knew the drum major and the tuba players from attending practice with them the day before. Maybe the moral of this story is that I’m easily delighted, but I’d challenge you not to be when the energy is that infectious. 

Because that is what these students work so tirelessly to do: Bring intense joy to the fans.

9. I’m an LSU fan now.

Maybe this is burying the lede, but one school on this tour stole my heart. And it was LSU. 

I had never understood what people meant when they said they visited a big college and immediately knew it was the place for them, but at 32 years old, that finally happened for me. There was something about LSU that captured me — as I wrote at the time, Baton Rouge is both the most alive and most ghostly place I’ve ever been. 

It was inherently cool without trying, dramatic without the drama, striking and wild without being obnoxious.

But it was the people who welcomed me into their RVs …

… and dance practices and tiger cages …

… who really hooked me. They took such delight in showing me their routines and opening their homes and hearts to me (even if their friend was in the shower), that it made me want to attend every game there.

The other day, I was sitting on my couch in Brooklyn scrolling through Instagram, and I came across a video of the Tiger Girls performing their routine to "Callin’ Baton Rouge" on a Saturday night in Death Valley, and I felt such a tug to go back that I got emotional. 

All of this to say: If LSU wants to give me a scholarship for a second bachelor's degree, I have four years of athletic eligibility and am willing to be a water girl for the dance team.

10. I wish conferences were still regional. 

Before this fall, I didn’t really understand the differences among the conferences. I knew the SEC "just meant more," but I didn’t know why. (It doesn't.) I knew the Big Ten was very Midwestern, and I knew the Big 12 was crumbling, but I didn’t feel any of it in my bones.

Now I do. After going to Ole Miss, A&M, LSU and Florida-Georgia, I understand that SEC schools are big, brash, bold and shiny. They’re new, expensive SUVs. The Big Ten schools are cool, wooden station wagons from the ‘90s. The Big 12 schools are rusty pickup trucks driven by farmers and cowboys.

And honestly, it kind of bummed me out. Because after going to Texas and Oklahoma, I was like … these are not SEC schools. They shouldn’t be joining that shiny conference because the SEC isn’t made up of cowboy schools.

The whole experience made me wish the traditional, regional rivalries were still alive and hadn’t been separated because of money. It made me want to rearrange everything. It also made me understand why college football fans are always angry about something.

11. I get the appeal of a suit.

I went to a menswear store in Oxford and put on a suit.

And I was drunk with power. I felt like screaming at everyone around me that if they didn’t get me the TPS reports by Sunday night, they’d be in big trouble. That if ROI weren’t up by 17% in Q3, heads would roll. That if we didn’t come up with scalable deliverables, we’d never succeed.

Did I have to Google "business terms" to write that last paragraph? I sure did.

12. As a Patriots fan, I should hate Eli Manning. But I don’t.

13. Weddings are a lot like college football games. 

This will be difficult to explain to any future grandchildren one day, but I officiated the wedding of two people I didn’t know before a game at Texas A&M.

Here’s what I said before I married them:

"College football, like weddings, is all about tradition. Most of you here probably know the — and I have to be honest here — very bizarre hand signals that Aggies practice at midnight yell. You know what gig ‘em means. You understand why 65 horses parade around the field before kickoff. You respect that a rough collie is the highest ranking member of the corp of cadets, even though she is a dog. You don’t question it because to you, it makes perfect sense. And you don’t ever give up on your team, even when they’re unranked. Because sometimes, that’s when the most beautiful wins happen (you know what I’m talking about).

"True fandom is really just like every great marriage, especially what Morgan and Rodney’s will be. You two speak your own language with each other. You understand each other even when no one else does. You are each other’s biggest cheerleaders, and your commitment and love will carry you through the rough patches and the losses. But that same commitment and deep love will be what make celebrating the wins and championing each other so beautiful."

Anyway, I can’t wait to be the "who’s that girl?" girl in Morgan and Rodney’s wedding photos for the rest of their lives.

14. Sometimes it’s really nice to not know anything about the people next to you. 

I read an op-ed a few weeks ago that said we should all know less about one another. Social media has fractured communities because it’s difficult to be friends with your neighbors when they posted something on Facebook that you vehemently disagree with.

At a college football game, it’s possible to know literally nothing about the person next to you.

On this tour, I met people of all different regions, races and economic backgrounds. And it was possible to talk to them about nothing but whether the current quarterback was going to blow it again, if the secondary was finally going to get its act together or if the coach should be fired. 

College sports games are one of the few communal experiences that capture a wide range of people. Sure, people of different beliefs can go to the same concert or movie, but art is more self-selecting than sports these days. You probably have preconceived notions about a crowd at a country concert, and they’re probably not the same as the ones you have about the crowd at an indie band’s show in a Brooklyn warehouse.

That’s not true of college football. Writers who live in New York love the sport as much as people who work blue-collar jobs in the middle of the country. A game can provide — for a few hours, at least — a space where you don’t have to know whom the person next to you voted for. You don’t have to know what they do for a living. You can just know that you’re both rooting for the same team, and that can be OK. 

Look, we need to have the tough conversations, and I have never believed that sports are the answer to any problem. They won’t heal a divided country, and they aren’t an escape. (I’m also a white woman with a camera crew, and I realize that means I’m received by strangers differently than other people would be.)

But I firmly believe that college football — despite everything that is systematically wrong with it — can be a source of connection and delight. 

And joy is worth a whole lot more than people often realize.

15. College football is all about home.

At its core, college football is about a deep connection to the people and place you love. You don’t have to go to a school to love it; maybe someone you love did. Maybe someone in your family did. Maybe you live in a place where you have to know how the team is doing in order to make small talk, so you love it by osmosis. Maybe you don’t realize you love it. Maybe you visited a school, fell in love with it and never looked back.

Now, fandom in professional sports carries a huge amount of weight. Trust me, I know that pro sports mean a lot. (I sobbed when the Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004, and don’t get me started on the Patriots).

But college sports are different. You can’t go to the Red Sox. But you can go to LSU, you can go to Oklahoma, and you can love people who did. You can walk around campus remembering who you were when you were 18, and you can pass the traditions down through generations. 

At Wisconsin, I watched an older couple put their arms around each other and sing "Varsity," the school’s alma mater. They weren’t there with kids or grandkids. They were just there with each other — because that’s how much the place means to them.

It might be just a game, but its roots go much deeper than the turf.

16. I’m very grateful that any of you followed this journey.

All of my Thursday and Friday experiences were surreal as they happened — and often strangely peaceful. There’s an element of stillness that comes with meeting the band or a mascot or seeing empty stadiums when they aren’t engulfed by deafening noise and blinding lights. It’s like seeing a turtle without its shell on: slightly disarming and very tender. 

But it didn’t hit home just how significant that behind-the-scenes access was until game day. When I stood on the sideline and saw the Wisconsin band decked out in their full, glorious uniforms to thunderous applause, or watched people jostle to take selfies with Bevo in his pen at Texas, or heard the the roar of the crowd when Miss Rev ran onto on the sideline at A&M, or watched the bare-boned stadium at LSU come alive with fireworks and more than 100,000 fans on a Saturday night, I realized just how precious those close-up experiences were. 

I was able to have them only because everyone on the ground cared enough to let me into their homes, stables, ranches, gyms, facilities and stadiums. And these experiences carried weight only because any of you on the internet cared enough to follow along.

It was the privilege of a lifetime to briefly be the lens through which we viewed this beautiful, stupid, glorious sport.

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.