The reason for all this

 You forget, sometimes, when you're inside the ropes. You've got your press pass and your parking pass and you lug your gear past all those regular folks waiting in line in their hats and school-color stripe overalls, and you forget.

You forget they're the beating heart of all this, all those alums and frat boys and coeds playing cornhole and drinking beer at 9:30 in the morning. They're the reason you've got your press pass and your parking pass and your seat in the climate-controlled press box, because if they weren't here every week to wonder why Coach Slobberknocker is dialing up a five-yard pass on third-and-nine, you wouldn't be here, either.

All of which is a long-way-around-the-barn way of saying I was invited to join my college roommate and his brother and sister-in-law at Ross-Ade Stadium for Purdue's season opener against Ball State yesterday, and it reminded me why I loved covering college football.  I hadn't been to a game at Ross-Ade as one of the Regular People since Knute Rockne invented the forward pass, and it was enormous fun. 

I got to wear my Ball State hat and bitch and moan like any other alum when my Cardinals went down 31-0 to the Purdues, doinking one field-goal attempt off a goalpost and slicing another wide right from spitting distance. 

"Well, at least we preserved the shutout," I thought.

My college roommate and I, meanwhile, agreed that the Cardinals did not impress in new head Mike Uremovich's debut. They had a quarterback who ran more than he threw (22 rushes; 16 pass attempts), and who bailed with unbecoming haste when he did drop back to throw. They looked like Army only not as good.

Purdue, meanwhile, looked occasionally sharp on offense behind quarterback Ryan Browne, who completed 18-of-26 throws for 311 yards and two scores. Of course, he did this partly because the Ball State secondary played so far off his receivers you'd have thought they were radioactive shrimp from Walmart. 

On the other hand, the Cardinals did crush the Boilermakers in time of possession, 33:40 to 26:20, mainly because the Boilers wasted so little time in scoring when they had the ball. Nonetheless, my roomie and I decided this counted as a victory of sorts.

As did the whole day, frankly. The sun was warm and it was cool in the shade and I discovered that the new fashion trend for college-age women is apparently boots, cowboy and otherwise. I saw a Purdue fan wearing a black-and-gold fool's cap, and wondered what message that was supposed to convey. Purdue Pete rode past our lot on that little Purdue train, and I noted he still has lifeless eyes, as Quint said in "Jaws." I also saw a fair amount of fans decked out in Cardinals red-and-white.

"Chirp-chirp!" we greeted one another.

"Ball State's got to get a better slogan," my roomie observed, correctly.

"Well, you know what David Letterman says," I replied. "The cardinal is the fiercest of the small robin-sized birds."

And we laughed. It was, after all, the thing to do on this day.