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The truth about college football

Istart this article with a tribute to rugby. In what has been a stellar World Cup, with drama already exceeding that produced at the last football World Cup, it is the attitude of the players and fans that has shone through. But the instance I would like to highlight in particular was referee Owen Jones’ moment of brilliance summing up the difference in cul- ture between two of Britain’s favourite sports while making Scottish full-back Stuart Hogg look rather sheepish: “Dive like that again and come back here in two weeks and play. Not again. Watch it.”

I spent my school days desperately trying to get out of rugby as I didn’t like having my toes stepped on, having my ears rammed between two guys’ thighs at second row and, to be hon- est, generally having my legs taken out from under me.

However, I have to respect a sport that con- tains so much aggression with barely a swear word or complaint heard all game.

In a recent football game I played for Jesus against St Hilda’s, I was left completely dumbfounded – not by how our defence had managed to leak six goals without us getting a shot on target, but by the amount of pointless backchat and appealing.

It is a virus that has got worse over my three years at Oxford. The odd thing is that, having played seconds football for much of last season (where games are not allocated referees and the game is instead refereed by a sub from each team in either half), I have noticed this culture is unique to the first team game.

The obvious reasoning could be that people care more in the first team. That might be part- ly true but seems unlikely given that, at least at Jesus, we are regularly missing eight ‘first team players’ while the second team is flooded with squads of 20. I don’t believe that they want to win any less. In any case, is it even possible to care enough that you would degrade yourself to whining “He was hugging me, ref”? Come on guys. Grow up!

More likely it’s because both teams accept that half the time the slight bias in every 50-50 decision will go their way, and the other half the time that it won’t. In seconds football if you dive, sulk or shout “Ref, you’ve got to do something, its dangerous!” when you’ve just been muscled off the ball, at least five people will laugh out loud at you and another three will spend the rest of the 90 minutes trying to wind you up some more – and that is exactly what you deserve.

You’re not Wayne Rooney. Your season, career and reputation are unaffected by a col- lege ref who’s been paid £25 to put up with this petulant nonsense. You’re probably a second- year geographer who’s whiling away time before finals and your inevitable submission to management consultancy.

I am sorry to St Hilda’s Football Club for picking you out, but I imagine my words are unlikely to even reach you, let alone embarrass you. I have no doubt that you will perform admirably in the third tier of Oxford Univer- sity College Football; you might even be in the battle for promotion to the second tier of Ox- ford University College Football. But at the end of the day, if you’ve ever had a striker pull out of a game because they need to finish an essay on the grammatical functions of proper nouns, you’re not a serious enough team to warrant shouting handball at every aerial challenge.

I used to brush of the accusations about the nature of football from my rugby-playing friends as an exaggeration based on heavily hyped media coverage. With regret, I have to admit they were right.

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