A college football weekend of hate-watching

The thing that separates college football from the NFL is the passion that surrounds it. People love their NFL teams and are wildly enthusiastic about them, but there rarely is the emotional tie that people develop with their favorite college football teams. This is much more prevalent in the south, but exists throughout the Big Ten as well.

You don’t see NFL head coaches wiping blood on their faces, crowd surfing during the pre-game show or swan-diving into the arms of their team after every win. NFL teams have slowly adopted theme songs and have manufactured traditions that helped to bring up the level of fun. But nothing compares to the emotional ties college football fans have with their teams.

Should I ever get to experience the Vikings in (or…gasp…winning) a Super Bowl, that will be incredibly exciting and emotional. But there would never be a regular-season game where I’m experiencing the emotions I was experiencing just over a week ago when the Gophers brought home the Jug.

These emotions extend beyond just passionately rooting for your own team. One of my favorite things to do on any college football Saturday is to hate-watch the teams I carry some deep, emotional disdain for. Hate-watching is as much a part of college football as belting out M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A after the Rouser.

Since the Gophers are off this week, this is the perfect week to watch teams only hoping to see them fail and ultimately lose. The first two teams to hate-watch are obvious and shared by nearly every Gopher fan. The rest are personal to me; I’m sure you may have your own. One could make a solid argument that this is a conversation for my therapist; I may have deep-seated hate in my heart for various college football programs. Maybe this is unhealthy, but I love it.

Iowa – The Hawks are always at the top of the list for hate-watching. Unfortunately, they are maddeningly consistent and rarely are losing to bad teams. So instead we hope for blowouts against the elite teams in the Big Ten, so they are sure to remember that they are not at that level.

This week: BYE before coming to Minnesota

Wisconsin – It has been a lot of fun over the last couple of seasons to watch the Badgers fall to the bottom of the Big Ten. Sadly, they are rebounding a little bit this year. The hope is that they are just good enough to be mediocre so they don’t make any drastic changes and the mediocrity stays for decades, with periodic shitty seasons.

This week: @UCLA. Both teams are on the schedule later in the season, so this will be a good one to watch.

—————— After those two, the level of disdain may drop a little. But we are still hate-watching——————

North Dakota State – This one has been with me for a long time, probably since they beat Tim Brewster’s Gophers. The level of delusion in this fanbase irks me and I love seeing them lose. Last year’s FCS semifinal loss to Illinois State at home was fun to watch. Now they are up in FBS and were undefeated until they lost to UNLV last week.

This week: Hosting a bad Nevada team at home. This one is not enticing, but next week at New Mexico will be. Go Lobos.

Nebraska – The Gophers’ current six-game win streak has been really nice. But I feel a little bit bad for Nebraska fans. They are Minnesota fans in the 80s. The glory days of national championships are close enough to be remembered, but increasingly unlikely to return. They are much better in year four of Matt Rhule; now we hope they plateau.

This week: At Oregon to hopefully suffer their second loss in a row.

Colorado – This hate is directly related to Deion Sanders; the way he handled his transition to Colorado and the media coverage as if he had turned the Buffs into a national powerhouse in his second season. Turns out that having your son and his buddy be first-round NFL talent really helps you win. Without them, without ever recruiting an offensive line and without actually coaching these kids…winning becomes really hard. The scrutiny is closing in on Sanders this year and I suspect it will unravel rather quickly in Boulder.

This week: Hosting a ranked Utah team. Unlikely I will spend too much time watching this, but I’m all in for the Utes this week.

LSU – Another team to hate based solely on their coach. Lane Kiffin is a grown man who can choose to do whatever he wants to do. He can leave his team in the middle of the playoffs. He can also give the assistant coaches an ultimatum to join him immediately or they aren’t welcome. He can thumb his nose at the rest of the SEC and try to sign guys recently cut from NFL teams. But I can choose to hope that he loses and his LSU tenure is exactly what I believe he deserves.

LSU has always been shady, so this is a school I can easily root against, even when Lane is gone.

But I can’t lie, I do enjoy him in the Dr. Pepper commercials.

This week: The Tigers are hosting Mississippi State. I am now doubly interested in this game and want the Bulldogs to pull off this upset. This game might be the top game to watch.

St. Thomas – this applies more to basketball than it does to football. For football, the Tommies are in a non-scholarship FCS conference, so they are about as irrelevant as they can be. For basketball? Well, let’s just say that I hope the Gophers win by 40 next month.

For me, this stems from the old MIAC days where I was a part of a basketball program in that conference for about a decade. I would hate-watch St. John’s and Gustavus as well, but I’ll limit this to D1 athletics.

This week: Who cares? It’s irrelevant. And it kind of warms the heart that the Tommies were essentially booted from the MIAC because the football team was unkind to the rest of the league, and now they are a meaningless sport.

I think that about covers it for me. I know others hate schools like Notre Dame, Bama or Oklahoma. Those don’t really bother me; in fact, I like Notre Dame.

Who are you hate-watching during the Gopher bye week?