Before you ever read your first June bowl prediction or argued on the internet or claimed scoreboard or any of that foolishness, there was probably a moment.
There’s a moment when you feel that something has got a hold of you before you even know what it is. It’s an abstract current that sweeps through the atmosphere and unlocks some hidden predilection in you. You’re ten years old sitting in a compact square of red and black in the visitor’s section of Texas Memorial Stadium. The Texas Longhorns are the center of your tiny, limited college football universe, but Texas Tech is taking them down a notch on their own field and you’re screaming with your best friend and his Red Raider parents and the rest of the rowdy, vuvuzela-toting maniacs from West Texas, a few hundred people making more noise than the entire stadium, and it’s roiling your blood and you don’t even know why, but you like it.