When I started this blog in the summer of ‘08, I ventured into uncharted territory as a college football player who blogs. Even today, few college athletes keep a running blog, and even fewer do so independently; most of them are commissioned by their program to provide fans with an “inside view” of their lives. Not surprisingly, when said bloggers fail to realize both their audience and the implications of their content, things can go horribly wrong.

Benjamin Burney, from my hometown college the University of Colorado, was one of those athletes. He approached the Colorado Athletic Department with the intention of blogging about his collegiate life, starting with fall camp and continuing through the season. Burney’s blog would be gunned down prematurely, with an astonishingly awesome 1-0 record of telling it like it is. His first post, “The Sad Goodbye”, detailed the sickening feeling that accompanied the report day for Colorado’s training camp, and was promptly edited by the athletic department with the vigor of a cokehead with copywriting experience. Luckily for us, in the few precious moments that Burney’s original post existed on the interwebs, Joel Warner of Westword snapped it up and preserved it for eternity. Here is a wondrous excerpt from the piece, entitled “The Sad Goodbye”:

You can feel it in the air, a tinge that tingles your nose and slowly rolls up your eyes. The grey morning sifts through the blinds as the rainy air from the night before pulls you up out of bed. You roll over and sit up giving your legs a rub as a deep sigh of learned anguish and anxious excitement bellows from your lungs. Your head hangs down as you pop your ankles and toes out of their Nike and Jordan dreamland then look over your shoulder at your girl of the night. She seems to mockingly snore in a deep sleep unaware of your dismay, your libido sheds a salty tear aware she can’t be back for awhile, and your body begins to ache as it stares at the rising sun on August sixth two thousand and nine. “Where you goin’?” She asks looking at you methodically putting on weathered shorts, holy socks, and a tattered shirt; you don’t look up for fear of her seeing the growing water in your eyes, you just answer slowly, trying your hardest not to personify your words, “Dal Ward…I have to go to Dal Ward… It’s reporting day…”

Quite frankly, I love Burney’s style. A few errors of diction, grammar and syntax aside, he is quite good at writing. Yet what I love the most is his exceptionally nonchalant approach towards his subject matter and audience. There is (usually) a little voice in my head that reminds me of the vast difference of readership my blog enjoys (meaning that I have to write the phrase “vast difference” instead of opting for the anatomical joke of “vas deferens”). Because parents and midwesterners read the blog, I usually try to keep it PG-13 or lower. Burney carries no such set of rules or regulations in his conscience. I haven’t been this reckless in my writing since I wove the phrase, “It’s kind of like The Matrix” into a high school English paper about Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point, and even then I steered clear of talking about my libido.

Before writing this post I had given little thought as to how the blogging filters in my brain actually worked (probably along the lines of the breakfast machine in Family Guy). After much thought, I laid out some of the main rules of blogging in college football - in the form of a propaganda poster:

Of course, as I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I don’t drink - but you can bet that if I did, I certainly wouldn’t go into much detail about it on the blog. What Burney most likely does not understand is the ramifications blogs can have for the image of an athletic program and the college institution it represents, especially at the Division I level. I can get away with quite a bit on this blog, seeing as Grinnell College Football isn’t making ESPN headlines left and right. In fact, I’ve never had to have a discussion with any of my coaches about what I can and cannot put on the blog; it’s generally understood that I’m mature enough to not bring my laptop to parties and start a live blog.

In my opinion, one of the great things about being at a Division III school is the ability to thrive in obscurity. I’m not writing under a microscope, so I get to have fun with it. And at the end of the day, I never would have written anything like Burney’s “The Sad Goodbye”, because reporting to camp in Division III is a joyful occasion, a celebration of getting to play one more year of football with your friends. If anything, I’m glad not to be a part of the Division I sports business and the pressure that comes with it. They may be playing in front of a bigger audience, but I’m having much more fun playing and writing for mine.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris [at] thed3experience.com All original material copyright © 2008-2009 Chris Jarmon

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Posted: 01|6|10 at 4:50 pm. Filed under: My Life as a D3 Player.
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