If your favorite college football team were a cultural figure . . .

Today marks the long awaited start of the college football season. I have been anticipated this day since the last note of doom sounded for Ohio State in New Orleans back in January. I can't wait to see the Cowboys and Razorbacks take their respected fields. Vanderbilt, being a degree holder, of course I have an interest in you as well. But hope doesn't spring as eternal with you as it does with the Cowboys and Razorbacks. With that said, I would like to take a break from the seriousness to play who would they be if said college football team were a cultural figure.

1.) Ohio State - Sisyphus, for the Buckeyes push the rock up to the top of the hill (National Championship game) and some SEC team is always there to push it back down.

2.) Ole Miss - William Faulkner, of course. He didn't get a degree from Ole Miss, but if you live next to the university and win a Nobel Prize in literature, don't be surprised if you get claimed by the university as one of its greatest achievements. I believe Faulkner failed freshmen composition at Ole Miss.

3.) USC Trojans - I would say a Greek, actually! Achilles. They are a powerful bunch that wins game after game, but for the last few seasons some team (Stanford last year) that like Paris should have no business beating them finds a way to plant that arrow right in their achilles heel.

4.) Vanderbilt - It is obvious, Charlie Brown. This team hasn't had a winning season since the early years of the first Reagan administration. Yet, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy always snatches away from him, Vanderbilt keeps suiting up year after year to try to kick their way into a winning season and a trip to a bowl game.

5.) LSU - James Bond 007. Throughout the 07 season you thought LSU was done for. How many times did they go for it on 4th down? But each time they found a way to escape, just like Bond always does. And at the end of the season when it looked like LSU was done for in terms of winning a national championship, they still managed an escape, accomplished their mission, and got to go home with a girl named Sears Crystal Trophy in the end.

6.) Arkansas - The plays of Shakespeare. Shakespeare covered the whole span of human drama, and there has been enough drama on The Hill in the last few years to supply Shakespeare with material for several more plays. You have young Mitch Mustain playing Hamlet. To go to Arkansas or not to go to Arkansas? To stay or not to stay? There's a Lady Macbeth in Houston Nutt's wife who wished she could have delivered a 2x4 beating to Hamlet's mother. An old king saw his last days in power, King Lear, Henry IV, or call him Frank Broyles. The Prospero of the team, Gus Malazhan, known for creating magic on offense is runned off to the island of Tulsa in the sea of Oklahoma. And Richard III or is it Iago is now coaching at Ole Miss!

7.) Oklahoma State - Ernest Hemingway. Here is a team led by a coach that felt like he had to tell the world that "I am a man!" Hemingway has always been accused of over-compensating. Is the same true for Gundy? I don't know. But both have been parodied fairly well!

8.) Alabama - Any literary figure that is stuck in the past and can't cope with the present. There's a slew of them! The past is Paul Bear Bryant. The present is six defeats in a row to Auburn. If you are an Alabama fan or player, the past is certainly a better place right now to spend your time in. This would apply to Notre Dame as well.

9.) University of Texas - Narcissus. This is certainly a program that thinks very highly of itself in a state that thinks very highly of itself. And they have a lot to think highly of, but after-a-while you just want to drown them!


10.) Texas Tech - Auguste Renoir. Yeah, they are pretty canvases and pretty aerobatic displays of the foward pass, but in the end you feel that there is not much substance there in the painting and no championships in the trophy case.

This was enjoyable, and I would like to continue this thought experiment, but I need to go get in front of a television set! IT is about to start.