My Favotite Football Teams and Why

I always comment on Facebook each week about my favorite football team and if they won or lost.  I thought it would be fun to explain why they are my favorite teams.

Kent is my Number one team because it is the Alma mater of me my wife and my daughter. The team is 10-1 this season and will be going to a bowl game for the first time since 1972 when Gary Andres ,Barbara Brooks and Jack Lambert were students there.

I like Youngstown State. This is the school my son received his engineering degrees from. They also gave him a scholarship that helped pay a good part of his expenses. They also have won four division 1A national titles.

Third I like Mount Union of Alliance Ohio.  The Purple Raiders have won 10 division titles and they are located 10 miles from my house.

My fourth favorite team to follow is The Ohio State. They are the biggest college in the state and everyone follows them . I love their games against Michigan every year. I also like the history their program has.

My fifth favorite football team is the University of Notre Dame. I is hard not to attend a Catholic school and not be a fan of the fighting Irish. Their history also attracts my loyalty. The Gipper ,Rudy, and Knute Rockne and his famous record.

When teams play that I am not a fan of I usually pull for the state school not the private one. An example of this would be the UCLA game against USC. I would pull for UCLA.

There is one team I do not like and that is the University of Alabama.  When I left basic training in Texas I took a bus ride to Biloxi Mississippi. I was shocked to still see people of color picking cotton in the fields. This was 1966 for cripes sake. It was explained to me that they were sharecroppers. While stationed in Mississippi I took many weekend trips to Alabama and Dolphin Island.  I did not like seeing Rebel flags everywhere.

I became aware of the University of Alabama watching the news while in high school. One event really turned my stomach.

In a vain attempt to halt desegregation  by the enrollment of black students Vivian Malone and James Hood, he ,Governor Wallace,stood in front of Foster Auditorium  at the University of Alabama, on June 11, 1963. This became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". After being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbachh, and the Alabama Army National Guard, Wallace stepped aside. What many don't know he did this a couple more times at other state schools.  The picture of these two students ,with books in arms, being yelled,spit upon and threatened will stay with me forever.

One would think that things have changed over the years. To some extent they have. A recent poll though said that 42% of all Republicans would favor secession from the Union makes me wonder.  Since Alabama is a very red state that is a lot of people. I believe that without federal laws and oversight things would slowly return to Jim Crow era.