What is it about American college football and the deifying of its coaches?

oh well. i'll just bump it then, i guess.

college hockey and pro hockey in the playoffs are the others.

still, plenty of others.

2) for most of the country college football is king, even if only by default)

3) college football ties to community go back ALOT further than pro football - pro football doesn't pass college in popularity til post merger. that ain't even forty years ago.

4) head coaches the ONLY constant - players play at most four seasons, assitant coaches move on if the programs any good.

5) in areas where college basketball is more popular than college football - north carolina, indiana, kentucky - those coaches get deified as much as any coach. the only coach i can think of who's approached the reverence bear bryant had among bama fans is dean smith. dukes fans don't sit around stewing about the day steve spurrier left, but if coach k had took the lakers job them fuckers would've taken that shit to the grave.

6) college coaches seems to have a level of activity and corresponding visibility in the community that's considerably higher than any pro coaches i can think of.

how so?

xpost - just standard charity work, dinners, etc. - i can think of dozens of charity events mark richt is involved with, visibly. i can't really recall any dan reeves things. obv. this is a result of college coach deification, but it feeds into at well also.
it should be remembered too that college players are recruited which means 1) these coaches are going into peoples homes, forming relationships. over twenty, thirty years that's alot of home cooking. and 2) the team itself is by and large (even with yr premiere national programs like miami, fsu, oklahoma, usc now) comprised of local players, not even remotely the case with pro teams where maybe a team will draft/sign a local favorite son to juice ticket sales but most likely any geographical connection between a player's hometown and his proteam is pure chance. ie. it's much much more likely that a player for the georgia bulldogs went to my high school than it is that a player for the atlanta falcons did.

the college football craze kinda escapes me, but i think that that's b/c of geographical quirks. if, like me, you grew up in central new jersey and had the choice of rooting for (a) intermittently good and exciting pro football franchises (the giants, the eagles, the jets -- with TWO bonafide rivalries [giants-eagles, giants-jets] betwixt 'em); or (b) the football teams of the 2 big local colleges, neither of which were exactly athletic powerhouses (rutgers and princeton); then choice (a) will win every time. especially so if, like me, you ended up doing yer undergrad at one of those 2 colleges w/ perpetually shitty football teams.

i didn't really get a taste of the strength of college athletics till i spent time at villanova -- where rollie massimino is STILL revered (TWENTY YEARS after the fact) and the villanova/temple match-up IS apparently a viable rivalry. not to mention the juju coming offa st. joseph's basketball exploits.

In Vermont we only have division 3 college football which makes me a Notre Dame fan by default at the national level.

Anyways, what I was going to say was that Joe Paterno's such a intricate part of the Penn State community, he leaves his home phone listed in the phone books of Penn State (its even been brought up on ESPN).

- Alan

I'd say it's the result of a heady coctail of crushing ennui and stupidity.