{"id":7124,"date":"2017-05-28T13:04:11","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosoncfb.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=7124"},"modified":"2017-05-28T13:15:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T17:15:51","slug":"college-football-fans-off-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2017\/05\/28\/college-football-fans-off-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Countdown To Kick Off: A College Football Fan&#8217;s Off-Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To quote an avid college\u00a0football fan, Darius Rucker, &#8220;There are two seasons for me. Football season, and waiting on football season.&#8221; He is not alone, as all college football fans are waiting anxiously. With the countdown to kick off now in double digits the pre-season hype machines are starting to warm up. There are pre-season polls, <a style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CollegeGameDay?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gameday <\/a><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; color: #222222;\">has hinted at its first stop of the season, and the TV times are starting to be released.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Fan Off-Season &#8211; Winter<\/h3>\n<p><strong>January<\/strong>. The 2016 college football season ended in epic fashion as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clemsontigers.com\/SportSelect.dbml?SPID=103701&amp;SPSID=657769&amp;DB_OEM_ID=28500\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Clemson<\/a> beat the all-mighty Alabama in the National Championship Game. Your team&#8217;s season ended in December after their bowl game. And now, you have been counting down to kick off from the moment that bowl game ended.<\/p>\n<p><strong>February<\/strong>\u00a0rolled around, and you get hyped about signing day and the potential of your future teams. Then &#8211; *cue drumroll* &#8211; the 2017 football schedule was released. Let&#8217;s be honest; you printed it off, added it to your calendar, <em>and<\/em> emailed it to several people to start planning football weekends.<\/p>\n<h3>Fan Off-Season &#8211; Spring<\/h3>\n<p><strong>March<\/strong> started to warm up and you welcomed spring ball, where you wore your team hoodie while attending any open practice or scrimmage you could get to. You planned a football weekend around the spring game. Any reason to tailgate, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>April<\/strong>\u00a0brings the NFL draft, where\u00a0you religiously\u00a0read the draft reports on &#8220;your&#8221; players. You frequently check and recheck the numerous draft boards. You watch and cheer as your team&#8217;s players are drafted one by one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>May<\/strong>.\u00a0The recruiting machine is back in high gear, as you devour any tidbit of news on any new recruit that is interested in your school. You do a happy dance when the next big game changer commits. You try not to get too excited however, just in case the kid changes his mind.<\/p>\n<h3>Fan Off-Season &#8211; Summer<\/h3>\n<p><strong>June.<\/strong>\u00a0We are now under 100 days until kick off. You have officially made it over the hump. Thankfully, there are plenty of summer activities to keep your mind off of football, as you have graduations, weddings and barbeques to keep you occupied.<\/p>\n<p><strong>July.<\/strong>\u00a0Enter family\u00a0vacations to tourist locations, of course while wearing your team colors. FINALLY,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.secsports.com\/article\/18785131\/sec-announces-football-media-days-schedule\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SEC Media Days<\/a> will start July 10th and run through July 13th in Hoover, Alabama. The SEC network will have nonstop coverage and over-analyzation that will carry you through the end of July.<\/p>\n<p><strong>August.<\/strong> FALL BALL will start! Just a few more weeks to football season. All the while, your school of choice will have: &#8220;players to watch&#8221; stories, Periscopes, and countless YouTube videos to keep you entertained. The early polls will be released, and along with\u00a0the pre-season hype will come reports of coaches that are &#8220;coaching for their jobs.&#8221; Everyone will have their own\u00a0opinion on why their coach should get another year to prove himself. Meanwhile, the TV analysts will speculate on why they should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town at the first &#8220;big loss&#8221;. Your head coach will brilliantly spin his &#8220;coach speak&#8221; to give the media the perfect quote. Hopefully, it won&#8217;t end up being the perfect quote for an entertaining meme.<\/p>\n<h3>FOOTBALL SEASON<\/h3>\n<p>Before you know it, September is here and ultimately you have survived another off-season. Congratulations, you have made it to football season. The\u00a0DVR will be\u00a0set for every game you can think of. The first weekend of college football, you will be\u00a0at a game or on the couch watching <em>EVERY<\/em> game. The &#8220;lucky&#8221; outfit will make\u00a0its debut as you hope it still has the same good mojo from last season. Get to those games and cheer for\u00a0your team. Wear the school colors proudly. Be a good sport and take it easy on your head coach he has a tough job. Make memories with your family and friends. Happy Football Season, Y&#8217;all!<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/631508014\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/631508014?et=J9bEHROyTjJzYULO6oaG5g&amp;tld=com&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=ZuKTdRi60eHahfW-R8ZYnjjv3Oaonm5bozt3GuB9F2A=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To quote an avid college\u00a0football fan, Darius Rucker, &#8220;There are two seasons for me. Football season, and waiting on football season.&#8221; He is not alone, as all college football fans are waiting anxiously. With the countdown to kick off now in double digits the pre-season hype machines are starting to warm up. There are pre-season [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":7130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,6,5,3],"tags":[102,18,7983,79,71,126,20],"class_list":["post-7124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-acc","category-big12","category-bigten","category-sec","tag-acc","tag-big-12","tag-big-ten-football","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-sec"],"modified_by":"Lauren Beasley","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}