When you are in college, your schools on-field success is often as important as maintaining one’s grades. Even if you aren’t that connected to all the noise on football Sundays or midweek basketball games, you might enjoy when your classmates have success.

At some schools the conference rivalries or city/state interactions are so intense that students, alumni and the neighbors enjoy the rivals’ misfortunes more than they do their own victories.

There’s really nothing logical about this behavior as it’s rooted in emotion. College students are all about charging the field or floor after an upset victory-often times prematurely. The beauty of being in college and acting rashly is that nobody is there (like Mom and Dad) to call you on it. Is your buddy going to tell you how foolish you looked and sounded? Not likely.

I fully admit to being this foolish for the first 10 years after graduation, but then reality set in. After attending enough games as an “intelligent”, and mature alum, I finally realized that no matter how involved I got, I couldn’t influence the outcome of a game.

I’ll never root for Georgetown, DePaul, UConn, or Syracuse, but I don’t take as much pleasure in their misery. College sports doesn’t afford a fan much certainty as one’s team’s fate can change as quickly as you can say, Ed Ott.

From purely observational purposes, I think college football fans are victims of schadenfreude more than other sports. Most passionate college football fans take great pleasure in seeing their conference rivals bellyflop in bowl games-only to have egg on their faces when the time comes when their alma mater follows suit.

One could easily lose his mind watching the various polls in college hoops. With a few games a week (unlike football), one’s fate can change repeatedly. It’s not a matter of jinxing your team, but playing to a high seed, especially #1 is difficult.

It’s always best to wait for that final whistle, horn or buzzer before you celebrate too crazily. When you don’t call campus home any longer, it’s best to not get too puffy chested. It’s like following the stock market.