Football is a stupid, awful game that I absolutely love

To begin, I’m writing this on the morning after the University of Georgia Bulldogs football team, representing the school I graduated from decades ago, lost for the first time after 29 wins in a row.

To the Alabama Crimson Tide. And Nick Saban. Ugh. Neither of those fill me with any joy.

I have been through the five stages of grief in the last 12 hours or so with this, both with the 27-24 loss itself and the likely scenario that the Bulldogs will get no opportunity to defend their national title, as the NCAA will leave them out of a four-team playoff. (This is what I wrote before the announcement: Likely in favor of Michigan, Washington, Florida State and either the Tide or Texas. Honestly, Texas should get the spot. I think leaving FSU out in favor of Alabama is a complete whiff by the CFP committee.)

One of the things I keep coming back to, in reaching a grudging acceptance of all of this, is that my feelings about this sport are incredibly conflicted.

Join me, won’t you?

Football: An absolutely brutal, over-commodified game

If you are knowledgeable of sports at all in the United States over the last, let’s say, 50 years or so, you at least are aware of football, and that the three biggest sports interests are the NFL, college football, and the NFL off-season/draft.

And that it’s all about money: Advertising, merchandise, ticket sales, betting. If there is a dime to be made on a football game, it will be made.

And the people who play the sport … the injuries and life-long damage these players have to deal with can be horrifying. Mind you, every sport has brutal injuries, but football seems to have them in multiples of 10.

Or more.

CTE. Knee injuries. The first time I ever heard about compartment syndrome was when an NFL Hall of Famer, Jason Taylor, discussed it. The idea of a muscle literally dying due to lack of blood flow because of football is 100 percent terrifying to me.

(Apologies if I don’t have that absolutely right. But that was the explanation I remembered.)

We saw a young man, Demar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills, nearly die on the field last year. I was that close to never watching a game after that.

And yet. And yet.

Why do I keep coming back?

The game on Dec. 2, when Alabama beat Georgia… I’ve been on the other side. Seeing Georgia win the national championship, after a 40-year drought, was pure magic.

And then they won AGAIN.

And there have been games upon games and experiences on top of experiences, all amazing. There’s no better feeling than seeing a great, last-second TD.

(Heck, just ask a Tide fan. 4th and 31. Whoa!)

After all this, as a Georgia fan, I feel like let’s run it back next year!