I never knew the power, the pleasure and the pain of college football until after I graduated from college. I do now, and I can't remember what life was like before.

Wellesley College had a football team undefeated for 127 years when I left. Something of which to be proud, for sure--but not quite real. I grew up thinking some of the most romantic stories I'd ever heard were my father's tales of his college football days and the famous Wesleyan undefeated season of 1969.

Flashback to the summer of 1998. My father and I took a mini-road trip to Western Massachusetts so that I could tour Smith, Amherst and Mount Holyoke Colleges. We were driving around Amherst when my father was suddenly struck by a heightened sense of awareness.

"This looks familiar," he breathed. "Why do I know this place?"

We rounded a corner. He pulled the car over in front of a wrought-iron gate. He got out of the car without a word and walked up to the gate. Not knowing quite where we were or why we had stopped, I followed him. Through the gate was the Amherst College football field--a small, division three school could be expected to have no less than an unremarkable division three football field with fewer bleacher space than my prep school in Albany.

But to my father, that field was the Shoe or the Big House or the Beaver. I followed him through the gate and into the end zone.

He held up his hand and pointed. "I caught the game winning touchdown pass...right...here. I remember it like it was yesterday."

We stood in silence for a few moments. I looked over at my father and saw tears in his eyes. The only time in my life I ever saw him with tears in his eyes.

He later told me that autumn day almost thirty years earlier was one of the best days in his life--behind his wedding day and the days his children were born.

I didn't realize it then--how strong and how transfixing is
the power of the tradition of college football-for those on the field, in the stands, and on the other side of a television screen. I can't even begin to describe the magnitude of the impact that it can have on any of those groups.

I can only describe it as I have felt it. Flashback to October 2004. My first quarter in graduate school. My team. No longer just my brother's school team. I am filled with school pride in a way that I have never been. (And I have endless pride in Wellesley College.) Night game, Northwestern versus Ohio State. Everyone says Ohio State is going to trounce us. But Ryan Field is packed to the gills on one side with a sea of red and on the other with a sea of purple. I can see my breath in the air on a cold, cold night. Ohio State and NU are neck and neck for the entire game. "First and ten Northwestern!" I look down at my brother on the sidelines. We exchange "holy shit, is this really happening" looks. Overtime. Touchdown Northwestern. The sea of purple overflows onto the field. The underdogs deliver a shocking upset. I go home with an elation that I've only felt before after a skating competition. Northwestern's win becomes my own.

Flashback to yesterday, November 5, 2005. I am on the field, standing next to my brother. He is filming the game. Northwestern is looking like they don't want to win badly enough. Iowa players are dancing around Ryan Field like they own the place. The sea of yellow is drowning out the sea of purple. I am going insane on the inside because the media doesn't show partiality on the field. Touchdown Iowa. Touchdown Northwestern. First and ten Iowa a dozen times. First quarter, second quarter, halftime, third quarter. We're going to lose. I'm going to see them lose for the first time in my life. It's my brother's last game at Ryan Field as a senior. And they're giving up! In the press box, fourth quarter, four minutes to go in the game. Iowa is ahead by two touchdowns. I can see the whole field. And something has just changed. Despair has lifted and been replaced by seething purple energy. Touchdown Northwestern. First and ten Northwestern. Two minutes left in the game. On-sides kick, NU gets the ball. Andrew looks at me. "No f-ing way. I can't f-ing believe it." In the deathly quiet press box, we hear fists banging on tables. "Yeah!" "F#$k!" The media is losing it. We're losing it. Touchdown Northwestern. Field goal kick for the extra point, Northwestern ahead by one. Each second is an eternity. My heart is pounding in my chest. I don't know what to do with my hands. Fourty seconds on the clock, Iowa has the ball. First down Iowa. First down Iowa.

All I can remember is Iowa somewhere around NU's forty-yard line. There is no time left on the clock. The purple sea is thrashing wildly. I'm sprinting down eight flights of stairs. We're on the field. We are bowl eligible.

The Cardiac Cats...ESPN calls it the Northwestern Thriller.

It's like you're a part of the action. You have as much control and absolutely no control at all at the same time over what happens. On any given Saturday, you can be part of something exciting. For four fifteen-minute time periods, you and almost forty-thousand people are all focused on a gridiron. The energy that ripples through the stadium is a high like no other.

There are many other things in this life that can produce the same type of feeling in many different people. But this is my high, right now.

Go CATS!