College Football: Part of the College Experience?

<p>My number one school right now is UCSB in California, which does not have a football team.. I know this shouldn't be a determining factor to where I want to go but many people have told me that schools without football teams lack pride and spirit and are often taking away a huge part of the "college experience". Help?</p>

<p>You are going to college to get an education, not to watch football. And the idea that there can’t be school pride or spirit without football is just bull. My university cut the football team the year before I started, but even before that they were terrible and no one cared about them. It’s always about hockey here, and there’s plenty of school pride there for me.
But you could still have a great college experience even without any sports teams. There are tons of people at college who couldn’t care less about sports. For some people, this is a really big part of college - the people who really want to go to a Big 10 school, for example, and go to every football game. Personally, the only reason I go to sports games is because I play in the band. I don’t think I would be missing much without the sports. If you are not a big sports person, especially, don’t worry about it.</p>

<p>There is an element of school pride involved with football, but it isn’t essential to the college experience by any means. UCSB has plenty of aspects to be proud of that most football schools don’t have, namely a beautiful campus on the beach.</p>

<p>While I completely agree with the above posters I can understand the notion. My son plays college ball, yet had he not, he would have only considered schools with a football program. Football has been in his life since he was very young and if actively participating in the sport in some degree was not in the cards, he was clear that he needed it “in the air” in some way or another. Right or wrong, I considered it a valid consideration when he was making his college list.</p>

<p>UCSB is all about FOOTBALL!!! Well, European football…aka … soccer!</p>

<p>Plenty of school spirit.</p>

<p>College football =/= college experience… unless you’re a die-hard college football fan.</p>