Last season college football Saturday, at least as we've come to know, it was completely upended. As fans. It was a challenge to channel the same fervor for game day with altered schedules and viewing experiences. Now, as we look to move forward, we take one final look back at the awkward season that was and how we as fans made it through from the solid verbal of this is a special production, So now What. Welcome back to the final installment of So now What. This time we're talking
about the fan experience. I am joined as always, I'm a good friend, Dan Rubenstein, Dan, how you doing?
I'm great? And I could not be a bigger fan of yours or the panel of reverballers that come on the show or that came on the show to way in on the fan experience. So I'm especially good today, Ty, thanks for asking.
We had a panel of verballers helping us with this final topic, the fan experience. Thus far, we've discussed things like what it meant to make decisions from the conference level, or as a coach to run a team, or as a player to be on a team, or as a broadcaster to try and broadcast the game. There's no doubt though that perhaps the biggest impact was felt by the fans, the fans trying to watch the product at home, trying to root for the product in the same way and
the same fervor that they would otherwise. Dan, the twenty twenty season was far from usual, and I think it's a topic you and I grappled with quite a great bit on the show, trying to figure out how exactly do we feel about this twenty twenty season. For a long time, as you recall, throughout the course of the summer, we didn't think we were going to have a season.
And then, certainly as news broke from the Big Ten and the Packed twelve, as caseloads went up, the deeper we got into the fall, there was a great deal of uncertainty. Eventually, though, they pulled the thing off, They pull it together, and there we are as fans, certainly as podcasters, trying to place it all. What were your thoughts in the moment.
Well, which should be noted also fans grappling with going to games, traveling to games with increased security measures and masks and allowances of people in or lack thereof. So it's not just odd for those of us who didn't go to games in twenty twenty, but I'm sure on some level it was both very nice to be able to go to games and forget all of the weirdness and tragedy going on in the world at the time.
So it must have been nice to be in a stadium if everything was sort of done properly, but also strange to be in a stadium with people separated out and relatively empty or somewhat empty, or super duper empty. So it was strange no matter where your vantage point was. For the twenty twenty season, I think, how.
Did you feel about it?
Though?
As a home viewer.
It was odd? It was odd. I've talked about it, you know before that there's so much of the TV experience, and we talked about this with a Niche Schrofsu where you know, seeing the wide swaths of empty stadium when a touchdown was scored and usually those sweeping camera shots or fans going nuts, or fans with the surrender cobra and super sad and bummed and deflated. And I think that kind of thing helps to define how we react to a situation, especially if we're not personally invested in
a team playing in that game. But it adds so much. The TV experience of a full stadium and the emotions contained therein really helps to tell the full story of what we're watching. And so that affected me. The fact that you know, I moved and I was watching these games for the most part alone when I'm used to, you know, watch parties and friends coming over that are into college football. I mean, you know, crimea River. That's I had the best of basically anybody in twenty twenty
if that's my worst situation, but it was different. It definitely lost something the culture of college football was. Aside from the actual serious losses in the world, that was the biggest hit that our sport felt that cultural element. So it is the least serious victim of the twenty twenty football season.
I was incredibly torn on how to feel about the season, because on one hand, there was a pandemic raging. It was the elephant in every room right. On the other hand, they were going to play the season, and we are a college football podcast, so we had to figure out how we're going to do.
Our best with it.
In truth, I never thought they'd be able to pull it off. I thought the whole year through, that something was going to happen, that caseloads would spike, whatever, that the whole thing was going to be called off in the beginning, then in the middle, and then towards the very end. We talked about it on the show. The fact that they made it true relatively unscathed. It should be its own topic that somebody covers at some point in the future, because I think that does represent an accomplishment.
But there was this source of conflict among fans. We asked our panelists, like, how did you feel about things?
We didn't know if we were supposed to be happy. Meanwhile, there's a pandemic.
Rage that conflict. Right.
It was weird.
Yeah, it was just like it was like a weird feeling. It was like, you didn't think you should be doing this, but of course, you know, we're all like addicted to college football, so we're obviously going to watch it, so but it was, Yeah, it was strange. It was like a weird feeling to get excited. But also this is a part of your mind that you're just kind of like, yeah, I don't I don't know if this is I don't know if I should be enjoying it.
This much.
So, given this sense of conflict that I know you and I both felt, I'm curious to get your level of excitement going into the season. I thought about it a great deal before hitting the record button. For me, it's probably on the same level as the third place game for the World Cup. I'm gonna watch it. I enjoy watching it. But there was a sense that this was a consolation prize and any football we got amid a pandemic was going to be bonus football, And so it was fine.
You're saying my excitement level for last fall, for the fall of twenty twenty, not for the upcoming year.
For the upcoming year, I suspect it'll be much much more intense. But for the twenty twenty season, for me, yeah, on the same level as the third place game for the World Cup.
So I'll stick with your World Cup analogy. I will say, a relatively interesting World Cup matchup not involving my country, the United States of America, so like Netherlands Spain, with more stakes than third place on the line. But at the same time, whatever happens in that match does not necessarily going to It's not going to affect my sleep. It's not going to affect how I read about the sport.
It's just it's it's good to watch, but I don't have the personal stakes like I normally would in a normal year or for my country if I'm watching that matchup, so that's where I'll go there. It was, you know,
it was it was more difficult than usual. I started baking pizza for that specific reason often where I just like, Okay, I'm gonna watch football, but I want to figure out something to invest in at the same time and to get better at If I'm stuck home, I'm going to be because otherwise, if I had people over, I would be cooking, I would be doing new stuff, and so I needed that outlet as well. But yeah, that's where
my excitement was. It was it was nice to have the sport as that distraction, but at the same time, I can't claim my heart wasn't fully in it like it would be otherwise.
One of the things that we saw, one of the things that I know many other sports podcasts also saw downloads are down. In the entire sports vertical downloads were down. I think enthusiasm was down. That sense of conflict was pervasive all throughout the sports world. As was this impulse to sort of find a way to take up the time you took up baking pizza. Our panelists talked a great deal about getting into things like smoking meat, or reading more, or taking up other activities that could fill
up the time. It was interesting to get that perspective and know that it wasn't just us that that we're feeling it. One other thing that I guess predictably came up in our panel discussion was this topic of the TV product. We've talked about a time and again. We did a whole series of episodes about it last week. What it was like on the back end to try and put that together, What was it like on the front end.
What I noticed watching at home was that the lack of fans in the stands was actually more apparent on TV than I was initially anticipating. And that was actually a little bit of a bummer for me. College games like the fans and everything, So something that I underestimated going into it was the lack of fans of the game how that came across on TV.
So I didn't mind the TV product as much as some I am not in the majority on that opinion, and that could be because of how you and I
have to watch a million games every weekend. Paying too much attention to any one game is generally something that's very hard for you and I to do because we cover this on the national level, but specifically, if you are tuned into just that one game, trying to soak up the experience as much as you can from your living room, I totally understand how you'd come away from that experience feeling very underwhelmed, feeling like there is something
missing because there are no fans, because the ambient noise isn't there. Maybe even because the quality of play, at least in the early going, was something to be desired.
I get it.
One of Cole's points was that he made peace with this because he felt it was more or less a made for TV product, and that was it.
Y biggest ticula for me was just I was excited saying, Okay, it's going to be a TV product. That's okay, But the TV product was really not great. The fans, yeah, you, I think tend to agree with Cole. You weren't as gung ho on it or at peace with it, let's say, as I was.
Yeah. I mentioned this when we talked with the panelists that there was an element of the entirety of two football programs sneaking into a stadium to play a game both the most and least important people on campus. I guess it's the most important in terms of revenue, but the least important is like, well, it's not the most
academic pursuit. And we understand why college football is played, and we love why college football is played, but you know, it's one of those things where you're making a deal with yourself about why college football players are playing in empty stadiums or half empty stadiums or quarter empty stadiums when it's such a different world, it's such a different universe.
So there is definitely that strange element that makes it feel like the newspaper stabs of the Michigan and Michigan State papers are playing each other the Friday night before the game in front of an empty stadium. There was that feel to at least a lot of Big ten and Pac twelve football. Obviously the SEC had a good deal more energy. Acc a good deal more energy Big
twelve to a certain extent more energy. It was weird that some games would look a certain way and some games huge games would look a totally different way and you'd have a huge matchup in the SEC and Michigan O'll has taken canceled. It was just this very strange day of television every week.
One of the other topics that was very popular in our discussion DAN was setups. How did people set up to watch these games, either just by themselves with a group as best they could. We talked about it. I remember in the moment a great deal about putting together some sort of outdoor setup. We asked our panel, did you do anything outside?
How was that?
For the BC notre ame game this year? We did a whole backyard setup. One of my buddies came out and you know, we it was just you know, something to get excited for amid a drab year otherwise, and so we moved like a fire pit that we bought a fire pit. We you know, moved a TV outside. I want to say it was fun, but you know, the cold and just being outside and all that combined and in the game it ended up being you know, a little bit underwhelming.
Were you able to do any kind of watch parties this year?
No?
I mean the only people that were this past fall in my house on Saturdays. It was basically limited to me and my wife and my toddler and my I guess slightly extended family who was not They were not really going anywhere. So no, there was I remember for the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl, I had the extended family over and that when I say that, I mean like three people. So that felt like the most social event of the calendar year related to football and just
social gatherings. But otherwise, no, it was a lot of solo time. It was I we did lose ty. You know what we lost. We lost the always exciting phone under the table at a wedding during a big game of ability I've watched. I mean, I remember when Boston College ups at USC in twenty fourteen. Does that sound right to you? I lost that ability. I watched that underneath during speeches set a wedding. The speeches weren't that good.
And I think there was a Michigan State Wisconsin game in twenty ten, two thousand and nine somewhere on there that were just like, there is that element of like being a little sneaky and watching college football when you're not supposed to, and it was largely lost this past fall, So that was the sort of the weird stuff going through my mind during my solo watch parties.
Most of the games for me were at home, and interestingly enough, in many ways for me was an easier season, just as the host of this show, because we typically have a lot of family gatherings in the fall for birthdays and holidays for nieces and nephews and all sorts of things like that.
Oh, we can look through our text records of you asking me for updates because you're at a christening and you're like, wait, who's hurt? Sam Alliant is hurt? Just that's how you would take in college football news for forty five minutes when you were unavailable otherwise.
It's true everything was off this year, at least for bigger groups it was off. So getting in front of a TV, at least for me, was much much easier, and so I at least appreciated that aspect of it. Virtually nothing else but to get in front of a TV, at least for me, felt like it was a much lighter lift this past season. A lot of folks found themselves, though, in the situation of having to watch games alone that they might otherwise watch with a group, and this gets
back to something Dave Jones said. It certainly gets back to points that we discussed for the last.
Couple of weeks.
College football as a social sport is something that should not be under sold.
And I was actually on my honeymoon in Rhode Island of all places, because of COVID during the Michael Pennox reach and me and my wife are basically by ourselves in a setting where it would have been a very different feeling, like imagine being in a sports bar.
With that moment, I was outside of my patio watching on an iPad next to my fire pit, and that's when I saw the play where Michael Penick supposedly.
Hit the pilon.
We know he didn't, but that's fine.
I was reading pizza message boards on my laptop while out of one corner of an eye watching the game. Yeah.
So for me, that definitely did not represent the norm watching a game out by the fire pit on an iPad. It was just not something that I had done a whole lot of. And I remember thinking at the time, I need to fine tune this, because if I can find tune this, then I could watch games with people.
It was all about trying to figure out a way to invite folks over, invite friends over to watch the games with me, because I agree with Andrew, it's a much better experience when you can watch with other people. I know, gosh, how many times over the years you've done watch parties as well. It's just the thing that
we do as college football fans. And so while I wasn't able to find tune that fire pit football viewing the way I would have liked, because it got cold up here in the Northeast, it got cold, and it wasn't as enjoyable an experience as I would have liked.
It is something I think that I'm going to work on fine tuning and tweaking and getting ready for twenty twenty one because if I can get that where it needs to be, and presumably because the season will start earlier and it will be a little bit warmer in the September time frame, even the early October timeframe than it was when the Big Ten was starting its season, I think I can get a couple good weeks out of that, and that could be potentially a positive that
came out of twenty twenty for me as just a home fan.
It should also be noted, and this is going to sound a little bit silly, but going to college football games with your friends, with your family, with whomever is good for your health, right going places, traveling places, and
sharing experiences and experiencing new things and new emotions. If your team has a huge upset out of nowhere because you went to Columbus or you went to Gainesville, or you went to Tuscaloose or whatever, and you got to see your team do something fun or do something that made you and your group incredibly sad, but you all shared that emotion, and you ate new food, and you drove down a new highway. These things are all good
for your brain. And so many fewer people, if that's acceptable grammar, much far fewer people were able to build experiences this past fall, and I think that legitimately, not going to as many games, or to any game, I think is not great for somebody's social growth and the social part of their brain. And I'm craving getting that back, because again, going to college football games, be it in your town, be it in a town an hour away, be it a four hour flight away, it is good
for all of our brains to share experiences. And we had to take. We had to take a by year a lot of us, and that sucks.
The gap year of college football fandom. As it were. We did talk, as you would expect, a great deal about not being able to travel the games. So many of our over ball or so many college football fans drop the marker on the calendar, drop the marker on the calendar.
Whether it's a.
Couple games a year, one game a year, one game every five years, it's something to get excited about. And it wasn't something that really was easy to do or could be done.
Our group of people, we've been to every bowl game for the past ten years, and we didn't do that this year. It was I think that detraction really stood out and we were still friends, but we didn't have that marker on the calendar.
How many emails do we get every year? Every week, every month, Hey, me and my friends, you know, are able to get away from our wives, husbands, kids, whatever, and we choose a new place every year. You know, last year we went to Clemson. The year before that, we went to Oregon, the year before that we went to A and M. And that's that thing that connects people and so people love the college football experience, and so when he says put down a marker, that's real.
You know, people look forward to going to that new college town, that new campus, that brewery, whatever. And it's always good in life to have something to look forward to. And I'll, you know, stop my feet one more time. It's a lost a lost element that is obviously not the most serious or important thing in this but you know, you notice it when it's gone, at least for a year.
I think one of the main takeaways for me after talking to folks about their experience in the past year, is really just to re emphasize that college football as a social entity is really what makes it special. And without that flavor, without being able to watch with other people, either in person or at home on the TV, or even just tailgating outside of a stadium with friends and family, that was a real loss, and it was through no
fault of our own. We really had no choice. I think in Part two we'll talk a lot more about where we feel things are headed and why we're excited to close the book on this really quirky chapter of college football and of American and worldlife as it were, and move forward to twenty twenty one. Hopefully to achieve a new sense of normalcy. In conclusion, I think we had a couple of lines here that really hit it best in looking back over the past season.
Last year, I was in on the football and out on the storylines, you know, like so many of the storylines for so Dower and I just really didn't want to follow.
Along followed football because it was football, not necessarily in on the pageantry, in on the narrative, in on the stuff that we like to talk about to get folks jazz for a season, it just wasn't something that people were swallowing whole the way they might otherwise. Cole was a little bit more direct.
I just sort of mailed in my fandom. Last year. There were nights where we didn't watch, you know, the ABC main game or whatever. We took a much more casual approach to it last season, for sure.
Much more casual approach to it. Dan not all in on the narratives, couldn't gather in groups to watch the games. A made for TV product. Did the best we could with it. I think that sums it.
Up, which is a huge shame, by the way, because the narratives add so much to the sport. Now, obviously people can get lost in them. But the fact is, when you have players emerging, when you have coordinators or head coaches or assistants whatever emerging, when you have a crazy upset that all of a sudden vaults a team into a conversation of some kind. Like those storylines, those narratives color everything in with the sport, and so I can understand why everything felt sort of hollow for a
lot of people, even if they were watching. It's totally understandable, and I relate. I definitely relate, and I'm sure you do too, right, Like, how excited were you about a largely successful Notre Dame season where they didn't have very
many close calls? Obviously the Clemson win and during the regular season was an overtime win, and I guess the Louisville game was kind of ugly, but by and large, this was a Notre Dame team that laid waste comfortably beat all of its regular season opponents until the a SEC championship game and playoff. Were you able to enjoy that anywhere near how you would enjoy it in I don't know any other really successful Notre Dame here.
It wasn't a huge drop off for me. But I will tell you that watching the Clemson victory up at Mama H's house, sitting twelve feet apart in wearing a mask was not was not something that added to the experience. Sure, and it was a bummer, and we did it because we had to, because I didn't want to make my mother sick, right, But this is just sort of where we were at with it, and it was a great season for Notre Dame. It was a bit of an unexpected.
Serve as a distraction at all to you? Was it like a cool thing you looked forward to because it had nothing to do with social media or politics or commissioners or you know, anybody barking at each other. Was it at all a nice distraction.
I think it was a welcome distraction, good on the weekends. But when taking in totality of everything else going on in the world at that time, it was really hard to focus on one thing. It was hard to focus on that and take the same level of joy from it that I would otherwise.
I can tell you, as an Orgon fan who had a very uh or an up and down year, you know, losing the way they did to Oregon State and calb but at the same time, beating USC, getting into the PAC twelve championship game under unusual circumstances, and ending up in the festival that festival loss was As I was watching it, it shifted from me being disappointed in the inconsistencies of Organs offense and the defense's inability to get
off the field to you know what. I know, it's a weird year, but good for the Clones, good for Iowa State. There shouldn't be an asterisk on this. This is a major, major deal, and the sting of the loss wasn't nearly as pronounced just because of my lack of usual investment. But at the same time, I'm sure Iowa State fans were especially happy to have that sort of distraction, that level of success, so it kind of made me happy for them. It was that silver lining for me.
I was thrilled that Notre Dame made the playoff. I was thrilled that they got a crack at Alabama. I wasn't as thrilled by the end result. But as distractions go amid a pandemic and social unrest for a multitude of reasons, I'll take it. Thanks for listening to the
fan Experience Part one. Join us on Thursday for Part two, as we close the book on twenty twenty and get ready for twenty twenty one special Thanks to our esteemed panel overballers Andrew Andrew, Dan Cole, Taylor, Nathan Mark, and Squishy, don't forget to visit our Patreon at burbowlers dot com