Ruminations on Marching Bands, Colleges, and Football...

I went to a football game this past Saturday. Unusual for me, I know. But my sister goes to Boston College and they were playing University of Maryland and the band came down for the away game so I went for her.
While I was sitting there slowly being unable to feel my feet, I got to thinking about the difference between public and private colleges and the presence or absence of a football program. I came to the following conclusions:
1. I do miss marching band. I didn't really think I did, mostly because that was the part of the year I disliked the most in band. There's an atmosphere that a marching band can create that is just...infectious. So, I miss band.
2. Public colleges that have a football program, as most of them do, definitely have a leg up on school spirit. It's kind of scary to see four sections of a large football stadium dressed in red and black all doing the same thing (it was the student section). They are bigger schools but with a football program to unite them, they seem to come together as a cohesive force.
3. Private colleges that have a football program also have a leg up on school spirit. At least compared to my school where we don't have a football program. BC and AU are roughly the same size student-wise, though I think BC might be a bit bigger, but BC has football and AU has soccer, basketball, and volleyball. Game days at BC are big deals, at AU hardly anyone goes to games unless coerced in some fashion. It was also interesting to see BC and UMD fans going head to head. The private school fans can chant "safety school" to the public school fans while the UMD fans just overwhelmed everything by shear numbers. Home turf and all.
Do I think we should have a football program? No way. I deliberately avoided schools with a football program as I'm not a fan of the game nor the atmosphere created. However, we do lose a bit of that cohesive spirit.
So, it was an interesting experience. I admired the courage of one very vocal BC fan above me in the solidly UMD stands. I froze, at least from the knees down, and felt bad for my sister as her team suffered it's second straight defeat, though impressively only the second of the season. I now care about BC doing well because she does. Other than that, I'm not really a sports person unless it's the Olympics. Okay, departing the soap box now.