"Upon his retreat from Moscow, Napoleon reportedly quipped of his army's harrowing defeat that the margin between "the ridiculous and the sublime was but a step." He could just as easily have been talking about college football. Fall Saturdays offer a wealth of the sublime -- dramatic games, brilliant plays, awe-inspiring athleticism. But what truly sets college football apart, is that after all the on-field heroics, the sport slips so easily into pure chaos."
"For all the highlights, what often binds us most closely to college football are all those other moments, storylines, sound bites and memes so ludicrous, so stupefying, so perfectly ... college football. So, as the end of 2025 nears, it seemed a good time to consider the things that felt the most unique to college football, a celebration not of the sublime but of the ridiculous. What exactly makes for a true "college football" moment?"
College football Saturdays combine dramatic games and brilliant plays with chaotic, ludicrous moments that often define the sport. The most memorable moments are weird, colorful, unexpected, and feel far more likely in college football than other sports. Memorable events can be charmingly fun or shockingly bad, typically balancing comedy and tragedy and straddling the line between ridiculous and sublime. Criteria for such moments exclude actions occurring during game play and exclude actual crimes, but allow on-field non-game-action incidents. These moments often feel inevitable in retrospect yet remain genuinely surprising when they occur.
Read at ESPN.com
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