The Life Of a College Football Athlete

The life of a college football athlete is one of the most complex things that go on behind closed doors  you would never know about unless you ask a college athlete. Talking from experience I played college football at Mount Ida College in Newton, MA. It was one of the best experiences of my life meeting all the people I did and everything as well as traveling. In this blog  I interviewed three  College athletes at various levels of the game asking how there life was during the season and after the season.

The First person I interviewed was a friend of mine named Khaneil Bruce, he is originally from Cambridge, MA and Plays football currently at University of New Heaven after Transferring from Nassau Community College in New York.  I played high school Football with Khaneil and we both graduated together in 2014. 

I asked Khaneil about how football season is for him and if it gets hectic, his answer was simple he says “it gets hectic if you let it”.   Also that it does get overwhelming when you think about it because he has to balance his academics , practices , games , and traveling all together which isn’t easy for any 20 year old.

            I then asked Khaneil about his time after football season, and if he gets bored, he told me not really because he still has workouts every morning. But he does have more times than he does during the season. Khaneil told me he does tend to miss the season when it’s done but then it just pushes him to work harder towards the next season.

Lastly I asked Khaneil what is the best part of being a college football athlete. Khaneil told me the people you meet is the best part of being an athlete , because those are the people you end of spending the most time with, and by the end of the season there more like family not just your teammates.

                        

Another person I interviewed about their live as a College Football Athlete is a good friend of mine named Randi Vines. Randi played football at the University of New Hampshire and is originally from Virginia.

When Asking Randi about his life during the season he says it wasn’t easy trying to adapt from high school to college because he had a lot more time in high school compared to college when you're busy all the time.  Randi also said after a while of having the “College Life “ and being and athlete and being a student it became a lot easier because he was managing his time better.

During the off-season for Randi said was similar to football season, his coach made sure that the athletes were not getting  in trouble during the off-season so they did a lot of things football related after being done with their student activities. But he says even with having all that stuff he still had way more time than he did during football season.

Lastly when asked about what his best experience was he says it was the atmosphere at the games and being surrounded by what he felt like was a family. One of the best things he says was being able to walk around campus and being able to talk to stop and talk to anyone about the game because everyone was a family at his university.

The Last person I interviewed about this topic is a very close friend of mine name Idris Drayton . Idris and I met at Mount Ida College my freshman year playing football. We both came in as freshman so we relate to a lot of the same things.

When asking Idris about his life during the season he says football was the hectic part as a freshman, it wasn’t the school work at all it was all the stuff revolving around football and how much time it took to get stuff done because of football.

Idris also told me when asked about the off- season that it was bittersweet, because he was happy he had more time on his hands but wished he was still out there playing what he loved and having fun with his teammates doing it. But it defiantly felt good to be out of class early and not having to worry about football and just being able to just hang out  after.

Lastly he says it was hard to choose what was the best part of his experience as football player but if he had to choose it would be practice, because that where he meet some great people and learned the most about himself outside of just being a football player. 

Link to the University of New Haven Football Program 
Link to the University of New Hampshire Football Program 
Link to the Mount Ida College Football Program 

Conferences in College Football

College Football unlike the NFL is split into many different conferences and divisions. The split of  divisions is basically based of skill level of the team and its size, it goes from Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3. These 3 division all play the same game they just have more skilled players then the other starting in division 1 and going down. I will mostly be focusing on division 1 football in this blog.

In division 1 football everything is different, from the size of the school to the intensity during the games, to the length of travel between games and being on national television. In college football there are 128 college football teams playing in the division 1 section. Of those 128 teams there are 11 conferences that have been  split  up based of region and where they are located?

The 11 Conferences are the

1.     Atlantic Coast (ACC)
2.   Big 12 
3. Big East 
4. Big Ten 
5. PAC 12
6. South Eastern  (SEC)
7. Conference USA
8.  Mid- Atlantic (MAC)
9. Mountain West 
10. Sun Belt 
11. Western Athletic (WAC)

 These Conferences hold some of the most gifted athletes in college sports. Some ready to go on and play at the professional level after just one year in college. Based on my opinion I think the most powerful conference in College football is the SEC. They have the most competitive teams, they have won seven National championships since 1990. It is mostly  known as the Power house in  college football including teams like Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Ole Miss, South Carolina, and many others.

In the 11 conferences the amount of teams vary based on where they are located, there can be 4 teams in a conference or can be 12 teams in a conference it honestly depends on where they are . But just because of where they are located and the  name of their conference has nothing to do with how good the team is.

With these conferences there is a championship at the end of the season. The teams that play in these championships are determined throughout the season based on how their record is in the conference as well as out of the conference. Which then determines who will play against each other at the end in a head to head game. These conference games are usually very important because they later on give the winner of the game a chance to play in a bowl game in the end of the season against someone else basically for another bowl championship.

The college football season lives of these conferences which make everything more exciting because when it comes to colleges in the same area who are placed in the same conference they result in huge rivalries. One of the most talked about rivalries in college football comes from the SEC, when Alabama plays Auburn towards the end of the season. It’s called the Iron Bowl, this game never seems to disappoint

-          Go to this link for more info on tiebreakers in conferences  for college football 

Go to this link for more info on conferences involving college football 

   
Video regarding conferences and strength in them 

How Did College Football Start

One of the most watched things in America is football, but there are two different levels of football the collegiate level and the Professional level. They are the same game but started two different ways. I’m going to go into brief explanation on how College football came about.

The First college football game happened on November 6^th 1869 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Where Rutgers beat Princeton 6 goals to 4. The score was this way because at this time  the game was played with a soccer style ball. The game didn’t spread as fast as you would think it would with the popularity it has now. By 1875 there were 6 teams playing college football.

 The 1880s to 1890s is when college football started to gain some sort of rules and regulations. As they implemented rules limiting each team to 11 players on the field, having a line of scrimmage, and starting the down markers at the time it was 5 yards is a first down and they got 3 downs which later changed to 10 yards and 4 downs.

By the 20^th century there were over 250 colleges having teams in this great sport. A lot of things came about in the20th century, as the numbers on players jersey came. Before players were just playing you didn’t really know who anyone was, but in 1915 it was thought players should have numbers on the front and back of their jerseys. It was finally put into effect in1937.

In 1903 the game grew to a huge popularity where Harvard was the first college to build a stadium just for football, which was huge because it never happened before. But with the all the things good happening it was like the game took 5 steps backward when injuries and even deaths started happening on the field. It was such a problem that the President at the time Theodore Roosevelt demand that changes be made. Which started what we now know as the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) who then had control over rules and regulations to make the game safer for its players.

With all the rule changes came the Forward Pass which was huge if you look at the change it’s made to the game in the present time. In 1906 the rule was implemented to help move the ball better. The pass game didn’t really become popular until 1910 through 1912 when a small school shocked the college game by the name of West Virginal Wesleyan College when they recorded their first undefeated season in 1912.

The Scoring in College Football didn’t change as the game started to change from the beginning as well. The 20the century was huge for the game, as the changing of scores went from 5 points for a touchdown to 6 points and field goals went from 1 to 2 points to 3 points. In 1958 the teams got the opportunity to go for 2 points after scoring a touchdown, or kicking the extra point which was kept at 1 point. The change in the rules for scoring grew the games popularity to an extreme level because of the amount of points being scored at a time.

For more information or if you would like to read more about the links I’ve used you can see them at the bottom.

         

Go to this website for more on the history  behind how college football started and rule changes from then and now changed 

Go to this website for more info on the first game played in college football.