The College Football Playoff was supposed to be the savior of college football. It was supposed to free teams from the burden of computers picking who could play for a national championship and allow more teams a direct shot at that lofty goal. But for the first seven years of this new system, the Playoff only served to give blue-bloods of the sport more opportunities to leverage their status and recruiting prowess into championship bids.

After years of waiting, heartbreak after heartbreak, and two successful seasons, both the Scots and Lady Scots headed to the NCAA Division III Soccer Tournaments after sweeping the USA South. This marked the first NCAA appearance and third ever national appearance for the Lady Scots, and the second NCAA and tenth overall national appearance for the Scots. It’s an impressive feat to win one of the notably competitive USA South soccer titles, and it’s especially sweet to win both.

It felt like it had to end this way.

Three straight years of championship losses, two straight in penalty kicks. And at the end of yet another long season, the Covenant men’s soccer team found themselves in a shootout to determine the conference champion.

Over the past month, I’ve had the chance to visit two other college campuses and experience football game days in two very different environments. I’m a huge college football fan, but I grew up in a family that didn’t have a team that we rooted for or any connections to a school in the South, so I never got the chance to go to a game in person. Last year was obviously a strange one for live sports, so I figured this year would be my chance to get a taste of what everybody had told me the atmospheres of SEC football games were.

There is a reason the World Cup is the most important sporting event in the world, watched by billions every four years. There is a reason the Premier League is the standard for global marketing and appeal. There is a reason soccer is called the beautiful game. There is nothing like the tension and drama of boiling down months, sometimes years, of preparation into ninety minutes of action where every goal means everything.

Homecoming weekend is typically a chance for our teams here at Covenant to soak in the atmosphere and reset the season with a win over an overmatched opponent. That opportunity for a reset wouldn’t be needed by any of the teams in action last Saturday, however, as all three teams entered the weekend on a hot streak.

Any true fan knows the pain that cheering for their team can bring. Losses, whether close or not, tear the heart out of supporters time and time again. Many times, fans are quick to play the blame game, saying things like, “if only he would have caught that,” or, “I could have done better than that.” Why is that though? Why do fans turn so quickly on their own teams? I have been guilty of this myself.

Plenty of sports have incredibly high skill ceilings, and plenty of these sports have specialist positions that require even more talent and knowledge than the rest. No sport, however, has a position that requires both physical ability and mental prowess like football does with its quarterback. The position demands extreme arm talent, elite footwork, and a deep knowledge of the game and its tactics. It’s arguably the hardest assignment to play in sports, and there might be nothing harder in the coaching world than successfully scouting one.

Plenty of aspects of American life and culture have suffered mightily through the last eighteen months of COVID-19 — a fact nobody on this campus is unaware of. Sports, although not a necessity, have been a casualty of this pandemic as much as the rest of our culture. And while there is still a debate raging over the practicality and safety of allowing fans back into stadiums this fall, this week has shown the value of spectators being present at any level of competition.

The Scots soccer team endured a rough start to the season, but last weekend completely changed the outlook for the senior-laden team. After an 0-3-1 start that included an away game at #22 Christopher Newport, the men’s team traveled up to Kentucky to play in the Bob Allen Nissan Classic.

On March 12, 2020, the world as we knew it ground to a halt. Schools were canceled, games were delayed, and everybody retreated into their homes for what they thought would be a two-week quarantine. Perhaps most jarring on that Thursday afternoon was the cancellation of March Madness, the popular college basketball tournament that dominates sports through March and early April. It’s an annual staple, almost a holiday, and its presence was sorely missed.