This Brand Of Football A Special One

Seconds before the opening kickoff, the public address announcer at the Pine Bowl called out a few scores from other games being played Saturday afternoon.

Penn State was ahead of Ohio State. Tennessee was beating Georgia. Washington was leading Cal. And so on.

Those schools play one kind of college football. At Whitworth College, they play another. From a spectator’s point of view, the latter is intimate, unpretentious and relaxing. You know, less is more.

I got to the piney North Side campus half an hour before the game was to start at 1:30. Finding a free parking spot took about five minutes.

The Karate Club was selling pizza. The ski team offered burgers and hot dogs.

A general admission ticket cost $5. And though Saturday’s contest with the Linfield College Wildcats was the homecoming game, it wasn’t hard to find a place to sit.

“No. 91 is my son’s lab partner,” said a man seated nearby as he pointed down at the real-grass gridiron where the players were warming up.

Not far away, two women debated the merits of Oregon cheddars. Someone else kept referring to Linfield as “Willamette.”

No bands, no blimp, no TV timeouts.

The national anthem was played by a young man who came out of the stands with his trumpet.

The Pine Bowl is a modest sunken grandstand on one side of the field, a small high-schooly scoreboard and the track-encircled football field itself. That’s it.

Judging from the remaining chips, the wood-plank seats were last painted during the Nixon administration. And being able to see traffic on Hawthorne offers another reminder that you’re not in ESPN country.

But as an excuse to go out on a Saturday, I’d recommend it.

Sure, the players aren’t being scrutinized by NFL scouts. But they still hit hard and occasionally show some flair.

The fact that beer isn’t sold (hey, it’s a church school) reduces the likelihood that you are going to find yourself wondering if it will become necessary to punch the drunken blowhard seated behind you.

And if, as sometimes happens, the desire to watch football fades as the afternoon wears on, you can make your move and be on the road before you can say “The winning ticket for the second-quarter Pirate Plunder giveaway is 0111.”

The weather wasn’t great Saturday. And it was not the Whitworth team’s day. But for all those glad to be away from hype and hoopla, small-college football was a winner.

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits Inland Northwest gatherings.