For UF students, the Muschamp Stare and Tebowing are more than just entertaining occurrences on the football field. Game discussion continues long after the stadium lights shut off. Fans live for the Saturdays when they can pause their private lives and head for The Swamp, where they’ll join together in orange and blue for a common cause: cheering on the Gators.
College football makes a huge impact on the unity of a school’s Student Body, according to an article published in USA Today. The article said football has grown into the country’s favorite sport to watch. Forty-one percent of viewers declared it their favorite, according to a 2008 Gallup Poll.
UF is no exception.
“I hear someone talking about football every day,” said Brielle Speranzini, a 19-year-old accounting sophomore at UF. “When something big happens, like Muschamp freaking out at halftime, you hear about it instantly.”
For Andrew Rosenberg, a 19-year-old business and sports management sophomore, sharing feelings about football is an important part of his college experience.
“On game days it can get pretty rowdy down in The Swamp, but that’s the fun of it,” he said.
Game days are a part of the college lifestyle even at rival schools.
At Florida State University, thousands of students in garnet and gold walk to the stadium doing the Seminole chop and war chant, said Riley Hays, a 20-year-old environmental studies and geography senior at FSU.
“It brings the whole campus together for those three and a half hours,” she said. “No one worries about anything but football for a while.”
For Florida colleges without football teams, school spirit can be hard to find.
Scott Shuman, a 21-year-old entrepreneurship junior at the University of Tampa, said that many students don’t always support the teams that his school sponsors.
The University of Tampa tries to draw students to sporting events by promoting free giveaways, but these are only “slightly successful” at basketball and lacrosse events, Shuman said.
He said many students go to the University of South Florida’s football games instead.
However, Shuman said that even though school spirit is minimal, the Student Body does unite over academics and organizations.
At schools with large student bodies, having a football team can bring them together, he said. But at smaller schools, “we rally on 90 different things, rather than just one,” Shuman said.
Stetson University is bringing back its football program and looks at it as a way to draw in students and the community. Stetson wants to increase enrollment, awareness and hype on campus, said Ricky Hazel, assistant athletic director for athletic communications.
The college’s last year with a football program was 1956. The new program will play in the Pioneer Football League, according to Stetson’s website.
A football field and a 6,000-seat stadium were built for the program’s launch, which is scheduled for Fall 2013, he said.
The school put on football scrimmage games for Stetson’s homecoming week, and about 3,000 people came out to support the new team, Hazel said.
He said he believes the new football program will make students’ college experience more intimate.
“There’s nothing like college football to bring students, alumni and the community together,” Hazel said.
No matter the size of the school or the division it plays in, football is a part of America’s youth culture today and is important to have in colleges, said Ross Baugher, a 19-year-old mechanical engineering freshman at UF.
“Football conferences have really grown in the last couple years,” he said. “It’s a sport that anyone can be involved in, and it unites students even past their college years.”
Students cheer for the Gators during the Florida Atlantic game on Sept. 3, 2011 at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Florida beat Florida Atlantic 41-3.
