Friends, as of this moment, 8:25 p.m. on Sunday Nov. 28, 2010, my Facebook news feed is still feeling the fallout from the hydrogen bomb dropped on it a scant three hours ago, a hydrogen bomb with a No. 4 painted on the side. BCS MOTHERFUCKERS! Facebook news feed explosions are nothing new, but just like our defense, what impressed me most about this particular blowing-up was the consistency. With the exception of two people who were weirdly excited about “Inception” playing at FLiCKS, every single status update from the Stanford network was a celebration of our newfound automatic bid-bestowing BCS ranking, a.k.a. the reason to break my boycott of Arizona.

This is a little bit mind-blowing, because as a whole, Stanford students don’t approach anything with this level of universal enthusiasm. By week nine of fall quarter, you all start to realize that the so-called Stanford community is nothing more than a giant e-mail list. Ujamaa walks out of Gaieties but won’t tell anyone why, including the staff of the show. That co-op or Greek organization you were so excited about last year is fully mired in administrative drama by now. You’re all about to forsake everyone you know for the next two weeks to study for finals because nothing is more important than schoolwork, only to end up convincing yourself that Robot Unicorn Attack is actually a supplemental reading.

And when it’s all over, there’s no time to celebrate as a student body. Our Housing Overlords doth sayeth that your ass better be out of their dorms by Saturday, Dec. 11 at noon. There are no awesome campus-wide parties, just everyone staying up until 4 a.m. drinking and packing, with no goodbyes. You want to go home until you remember why you were so eager to leave for college in the first place, and that’s when the roots of that mental health crisis that nobody wants to talk about anymore start to take hold. It’s probably worth noting that the two colleges happier than us, according to the Princeton Review, one of which is in Rhode Island, don’t kick their students out until the Monday after finals end.

It’s no wonder that by the time winter quarter rolls around, everyone’s off in their own little world, but there’s just a little bit of hope because the Red Zone is 4,000 strong, or 60 percent of the undergraduate student body, a percentage that is more than everyone who’s not Washington State, where there is absolutely nothing else to do on a Saturday, or U$C.

For the U$C and Arizona games, 4,000 Stanford students were able to determine that their midterms next week didn’t need any more studying, that some random lecture delivered to an empty room wasn’t more interesting and they were able to devote four-plus hours of their time to congregate and cheer and boo and gasp and jump to “All Right Now” all at the same time. On a campus where pretty much everyone complains of a feeling of isolation, we were able to spend four hours on a few Saturdays living life together, and that was badass. For those of you who still think you’re too smart to care about sports, you should know that that sense of community is why so many of the more pathetic/sincere parts of the country treat football games like church.

However, if we’re going to anoint football games as the replacement for Counseling and Psychological Services, there are going be a few administrative issues. For one thing, you kids missed your appointments at the Oregon State and Washington State games. You’re still literal fair-weather fans who can’t be bothered to check the football schedule before you book your return flight home. Also, you haven’t fully embraced the concept of Football Saturday. If you really want the actions of oversized men-children to be transcendent, you need to tune out all other distractions for the entire day. I would suggest a Four Loko if you needed assistance but … sadface. Also, I admit that a preponderance of all words uttered about football are mind-numbingly inane, and that embracing football means accepting the humorless anachronistic paramilitary world of college athletics at face value, but there will always be things in life to try your faith.

Two weeks ago, I told you that college football was all about hate. Now I want you to love it, but don’t worry. After all, the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference, and sleep-deprived indifference is what I see in the eyes of most people on this campus past week three, and indifference is the cardinal sin in college sports. Normally, my news feed is full of solipsistic, dispassionate complaints about schoolwork at this point in the quarter, but today it’s been a steady stream of the number four. All praises due to Harbaugh. Please don’t go to Michigan.

To discuss the Talmud or the spread offense, e-mail [email protected].