I gave college football my heart, it gave me a blog.

By Trev Alberts
formerly of ESPN.com

I thought I told you to do something about this snow, kid. The path to the mailbox is just one big sledding hill, and my snowshoes are still in the shop. We're stranded in the middle of nowheres! How am I going to read all of those lovely letters of intent my followers have lovingly sent me? HOW!

I'm forlorned. Really, I am. It's the big V-Day, and there's no college football, not even spring practice, to keep me warm at nights. Sure, it's unofficial strength and conditioning season, but that only warms the cockles of my heart so much. I miss you, college football. I miss your musk, I miss your scent. I miss being near you! I miss being around you! In your eyes, the light, the heat, the tailgating! Woe is this footballess husker of a man, says me!


The only thing to cheer me up is to give loving odes to my favorite things about football season. If it turns out that this only makes my readers more miserable in this cold and unforgiving wasteland I like to call February, and NO, NASCAR and regular season college winter sports definitely DO NOT COUNT, I say too bad! We're all going to be nostalgic and possibly melancholy together. Now, fire up your favorite emo album, preferably something with a piano and talking about yearning, and let's go.


O, my beloved Jagermeister, while you may always be with me year 'round, you lose that glint in your eye when winter falls. I miss the hot fall afternoons we spend with various mixed beverages and insane shooters. My Sparks is nothing but a delicious malt alcohol-based energy drink without you to be the yin to its yang.


And to my darling Sparks, whilst you keep my heart twittering at dangerously unhealthy levels these cold mornings, I miss our walks in the parking lots as the passerby stop to comment "you're not actually going to keep drinking that are you?" and "sir, please locate your pants." The hookers, tonight they are safe, and that makes me die, just a little bit, inside.


To our editor's hero, Mr. Louford Holtz, gone are the days when your unintelligible lisp warmed our hearts nightly. Your homespun brand of gee-willikers football knowledge is absent in these stark months, replaced by the less godly knowledge of Digger Phelps and his assortment of superfluous highlight marking pens. While your loss also signifies the loss of one Mr. May, a loss the royal we surely does not miss, we smile a little less without your speech impediment.


My lovely, sweet cupcakes, you never seem to get the attention you deserve during those rough stretches of the season, when conference play seems months away, and local powerhouses call on you to help them tune-up for the real games. You are the unsung heroes of the college football landscape. Paid off by the heavyweights like some optimistic stripper, you gladly take the dirty singles of home-home series as you save up for medical school. The early season is nothing without your directional charms, and like spring training, I look forward to seeing you most.


More literally, to our beloved ladies of schools south of the Mason-Dixon line, your sheer unfathomable ladyness makes even the most emasculating blowout manageable. Spending equal hours grooming and celebrating, you set a standard that no man, no matter how early he wakes up, throws on a t-shirt and jeans, and starts his 16-hour drinking and gorging binge, could ever manage to achieve...unless he was a fancy lad. Donning clothes like halter tops, tubed tops, sun dresses, and a myriad of other fashion choices that most Yankee girls eschew, you require beer goggles less often than I would ever admit.


To rule 3-2-5e, I will never miss you. You are like the burning discharge that reminds me of previous failed decisions. Back then, it seemed like a good idea, but now, I have fewer plays and more commercials to check if I'm still able to spread the infection.


Finally, to the random trophies of our country's historic rivalries, life seems that much more the hollow without an oaken bucket, megaphone, or lug nut to fill it. Sure, the more popular victory bells and walking sticks get their share of the limelight, but I'm talking about the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk, the Cy-Hawk trophy, various other trophies that also have hawk in their names, jug-shaped trophies that yonder back to regional antique moonshine industries, and all those other googaws that make you say "WTF" when you try to collect them on Xbox. You, the underdogs of the trohpying world, I miss you dearly. Please, return to me.

Trev Alberts is currently trapped in the snowed-in FireMarkMay compound. He stocked the supply closet with discounted chalky candy hearts last June.