Two Saturdays ago, I found myself enjoying a lovely evening of joy and fellowship at the wedding of a dear friend. The bride was beautiful, the groom charming, the company lively, and the steak tender. There was, however, a slight problem: I was missing college football.
And not just any day of college football, mind you. Not only were my accursed, beloved Arkansas Razorbacks playing and, naturally, blowing yet another fourth-quarter lead for the second time this season and the thousandth of my lifetime, it was the day that gave us the hotly anticipated showdown between the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide. All the storylines were there: Two top-ranked Southeastern Conference juggernauts looking to claim pole position in the College Football Playoff rankings. On one side, you had Alabama’s head coach, Kalen DeBoer, who took over this season following the retirement of best-to-ever-do-it Nick Saban, in his first SEC matchup. On the other, you had Georgia’s Kirby Smart, the best active head coach, looking to finally shake off that Bama boogeyman that haunted his team when facing them under Saban. And the game did not disappoint, with the Crimson Tide out to a massive lead before the Bulldogs mounted one of the most historic second-half comebacks in years, only to fall short in the end.
What a game it was. Apparently. Again, I wouldn’t know, being marooned in one of bucolic Virginia’s more bug-infested wineries. Of course, there was merriment and libations, the Lord blessed the happy couple, and the DJ played the hits — white people sure love “Mr. Brightside,” don’t we — but there wasn’t a drop of cell service to be found.
Sadly, my tragic tale is all too common. Wedding season afflicts millions of football fans every year, especially those with preexisting conditions such as being religious or hailing from a red state. We Southerners suffer worst of all, being among the population more likely to get married, and to get married young, and being by far the most likely to play good football.
And while fans of the National Football League suffer as well — in any bar in Philadelphia or Detroit, you can find a story about some local who threatened to or did end his relationship because the missus picked the date of a home game — for college football, it’s worse. For one thing, there is less of it, with a regular season of only 12 games to the NFL’s 17. It is also more acute, as I mentioned, as college is the time most younger fans start attending or participating in weddings. A year outside of graduation, I had been in or to more weddings than I had years on the planet — the lion’s share, of course, taking place in the fall.
Along with land wars in Asia and going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line, weddings during football season are one of the classic blunders. It ranks chief among them, really, because those other two you only ever do once. A heavy wedding season can come at you weekly.
“Wedding season” stretches expansively from late spring to late fall, “with weddings peaking in June and September,” according to something calling itself Brides.com. Yet if you take a gander at the most popular wedding dates of this year, Google’s unsettling AI aggregator arrives at the following Saturdays: Sept. 21, Sept. 14, June 22, May 18, and Oct. 12. Three of these, you’ll note, are smack-dab in the middle of football season.
I know from several of my friends who are college football fans that the season schedule was given at least some consideration when planning their respective weddings. It is often less for the bride and groom than for the attendees: friends who might be out of town for games or just the simple American courtesy of not wanting to put anyone in a position to choose between friends they love and the intoxicating, bittersweet nectar of a really choice Saturday slate.
Take, for instance, that fifth-most popular date, Oct. 12. Any state-school bride-to-be worth her salt should be able to tell you that day is a no-go for weddings. Few weeks have given college football fans such a range of anticipated matchups: heated rivalry games in Texas vs. Oklahoma and Tennessee vs. Florida; high-flying conference matchups in Ohio State vs. Oregon, Mississippi vs. LSU, and Penn State vs. Southern California; and ranked teams such as Utah, Alabama, Pittsburgh, and Kansas State in easily losable games. Even Vanderbilt vs. Kentucky is worth watching this year! I pity the Texas couple with nuptials this weekend.
Instead, this hypothetical-but-totally-relatable bride-to-be would have looked at the schedule and thought perhaps the week of Oct. 5 could be a wedding date. On paper, the slate was, in a word, lackluster. In the college football fan business, we’d call this an “apple picking” weekend, a Saturday you could spend out together with the family or significant other instead of being a couch monster, much like the sneaky dinner-date tradition the weekend before March Madness starts. Those of you following along at home know where I’m going with this, as that was not the Saturday that lay in store. No, instead what graced our eyes that day was one of the most dramatic, entertaining, and, for some of us, joyous days of college football literally ever. Eight top-25 ranked teams lost, including No. 1 Alabama, upset by perennial doormat Vanderbilt. Syracuse beat UNLV on a controversial call, Texas A&M walloped Missouri, Washington pantsed Michigan, and Miami hung on somehow in an instant classic versus the “woke mob” at California. Even better than all that, Arkansas decided just once to hold on to a fourth-quarter lead and locked down No. 4 Tennessee (Woo Pig Sooie, thank you very much).
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The point is, you can’t sleep on even bland-seeming Saturday slates. And we only get 12 of them a year, unless you are a fan of about eight teams in the SEC or Big Ten, then you might get a few more. Plus, with the trajectory of the NCAA fumbling necessary name, image, and likeness changes, transfer rules, and conference realignment, the inconsistencies in the college football foundation are beginning to fissure. College football is a uniquely American institution, something alien to every other sports league on the planet, a beautiful mélange of proficiency and mediocrity, localism and universality, earnestness and insanity. It is a precious, limited resource.
Marriage, too, is a supreme institution, and one obviously more important than football, if only slightly. But my point is they shouldn’t have to compete. Your dopey cousin can get married any other season of the year — Vanderbilt beating Alabama might only happen once, and it’s on Saturdays in the fall.
J. Grant Addison is the deputy editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.