The As Intended Bowl

 I don't know what you're watching this afternoon. But I know what I'm watching.

I'm watching college football -- and by that I mean actual college football, the kind played by actual students and not entrepreneurs. 

I'm watching the Corps of Cadets, the Brigade of Midshipmen, the long gray line and the sea of white caps.

I'm watching the Black Knights of the Hudson, and the Midshipmen of Annapolis. The boots on the ground, and the bluejackets on the deck. I'm watching Army-Navy.

It is an annual ritual with me, and now more than ever. I watch because the history nerd in me demands it -- Army-Navy goes back to 1890, after all -- and  because I'm a sucker for pageantry. But I also watch because it is to me one of the last vestiges of a gone time, when football was an autumn reverie and not some mighty engine of commerce bankrolled by Amazon and the makers of chainsaws and muscle trucks and the like.

I watch today, especially, because the above just became as true as it's ever been, with the NCAA this week finally acknowledging what we've all known for some time now: That college football (and basketball, too) are ruled by the dictates of the boardroom, a business driven by the same prerogatives as IBM or U.S. Steel or any other corporate American giant of the past.

And, listen, I get that. I'm not some romantic fool wallowing in the mists of yesteryear, or at least not always. I understand college athletics began headed toward this the first time a TV network changed a start time, or the first time a swoosh appeared on a player's jersey because his school was getting a nice chunk of change from Nike. And I understand Army-Navy in 2023 is not Army-Navy back when Grover Cleveland was president.

(I also understand that, even in the days of Grover, players were sometimes paid. The Thousand-Dollar Handshake is as much a college football tradition as stealing a rival's mascot or, in one famous instance, Yale infiltrating Harvard's card section so it out spelled WE SUCK.)

Anyway ...

I will watch Army-Navy today. Because in spite of everything, it's the As Intended Bowl -- the closest college football can come anymore to the ideals it once at least tried to uphold. 

It's not great football. The players are smaller and slower and for the most part aren't as skilled as the players at Alabama Inc. or Ohio State Inc. or Georgia Inc. 

But you know what?

For sixty minutes, they will play their hearts out. For sixty minutes, if they're seniors, it  will be one last valedictory fling with the game they fell in love with when they were kids dreaming their dreams in the backyard.

And when it's done, they'll shake hands and walk off the field and into the service of their country. 

I don't know what you're watching today. But I'll watch that all day every day.