Off The Beaten Record: Ohio Football Fans Get Best of All Levels
Football fans in Ohio are pretty spoiled.
I’m not complaining, I’m just pointing it out.
A friend of mine grew up in New York. We were talking about our favorite football teams recently. He’s a Jets fan, which is tough but makes sense. He’s also an Ohio State fan, which I found odd.
“Really, up there, all you have is Syracuse,” he explained, “so you either root for Penn State or Ohio State.”
He didn’t even mention being a high school fan.
Growing up in Ohio, and covering sports here for most of my life, I was fortunate. We may not have beaches or consistent weather or distinguishing accents or cool cuisine to speak of, but sports and football we have locked down.
We have some of the best high school football athletes playing in the most competitive conferences in the nation. In college, we obviously have the Buckeyes, but we also have most of the MAC, a ton of good Division III schools, which are on par or better than anyone else in the country (thank you, Mount Union). Oh, and of course, we have two NFL teams, neither of which are Super Bowl contenders but still, they’re historic franchises in a strong conference.
That’s nothing to sneeze at.
That combination isn’t available in most states, maybe California, Texas and Florida.
So the point is, in Ohio we’re pretty lucky. So lucky that we can even debate which level we enjoy the most. All of you have had this debate before, I’ve had it three times this month: High school, college or pro, what’s your favorite. The debate is usually between pro or college but some of you love high school above them all, I’ve met you, I know you’re out there.
I’m an oddball in that I’ve always favored the NFL despite not being a Browns or Bengals fan. The interesting thing is that most people debate college vs. pro or even high school based on characteristics of the level. Like, NFL has the best players, college and/or high school is played for love of the game, you get the point.
But the truth is, preference is often more about your circumstances.
I loved the 49ers as a kid because my dad grew up on the west coast and because they won so much and were exciting to watch. As I got older, my only day off for decades was on Sunday, allowing me to actually kick back and watch games.
Saturdays I was buried in sports coverage so all I really got were updates on college games.
Of course, Fridays were for high school coverages so I became a superfan of prep football.
In the past few years, I’ve become more of a college fan simply because I can sit and digest 50 games in a given weekend.
I know a lot of Ohio State fans who could care less about the pro game, mostly they’re all Browns fans so, that explains it.
You get the debate. You’ve had it yourself, maybe even gotten into a fight over it. Pro vs. college vs. high school.
The good thing is we can have that debate in legit fashion in Ohio.
So as college kicks off this weekend with NFL the next, take a deep breath and enjoy all three levels of the game being played at the same time of year. We can probably all agree it is a time of year like no other.
Number of the Week: 5
– The Western Buckeye League kicks off its football schedule this week with five games. The highlight could be St. Marys at Ottawa-Glandorf. The Titans handed the Roughriders their only regular season loss a year ago, 13-7.
Quote of the Week: “It was tiring, but it was fun.”
– Bath running back Devon Kinyon ran for 110 yards on 19 carries with a touchdown and played defensive back in the Wildcats’ 19-9 win over Allen East to open the season last week.