All of nine days have passed since football’s homecoming and the scent of Lion pride still hangs in the Morningside air. Wait, no, that’s all wrong—nobody cares.

Not to demean those who showed up to the game and wore their school spirit on their sleeves. Well, maybe a little. I mean, I was there too, but only physically, not in spirit. Actually, there was a great turnout of people like me, and together, I’m sure we were a sight and sound to behold.

There were plenty of senior players down on Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium at the Baker Field Athletics Complex. They looked up into our stands to see them filled with as many fans as they’d ever seen in the past four seasons and realized, with more than a little nostalgia, that this was the last time they’d have this kind of crowd on their side. Or maybe it never was about the audience. Still, their final homecoming has passed, and each game from here on out will feel a little more like a farewell.

I took a cab uptown with a couple of friends rather than wait in line for the shuttle to the game. We got to the stadium and made a meal of the free handouts. By the way, for some reason we got a lot of free food on campus from desperate vendors like the Starbucks Corporation and their double-shot energy drinks the other day. What’s the deal? I wonder if it pays off to give out as many experimental drinks and foodstuffs as they do. As a rule of thumb, I don’t accept any food from strangers; it’s just how I was raised.

Anyway, the bros and I made it over to the public area for more free food and beer. Now technically the “free” part about our food took a little sweet talk from my friend to make happen, and technically the beer was supposed to be limited to four free drinks. There are loopholes to every thing, though, but that’s Bad Newz for another day.

For the meantime, imagine us—a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other, feeling real good about ourselves. And imagine our dismay when we looked over at a group of Princeton grads drinking our tuition money in a cup of the finest Bud Light in the land. I was outraged, less by the presence of our mortal enemies of the day than by the lack of financial transparency and accountability, which I’m all about.

We approached one of the smaller Princeton graduates, threatened his life, and then made friends with him and his buddies. They had only recently graduated and none of them had been living in the city for more than half a year, so there was this hopeful glow about them. They seemed enthusiastic about life, even with this hellstorm economic climate that threatens to kill us all and our first-born sons.

I was enjoying the company and conversation, but then I heard that they had almost run out of beer and were going to stop serving in mere minutes. I regressed to my instinctual hatred of Princeton.

Then I got to thinking—do I really hate Princeton? Maybe my feelings towards the school are just some projection of my own fears and anxieties onto an innocent population. When I do that, I’m no better than Princeton and only slightly better than Brown. I felt a renewed sense of well-being come over me and soothe my edgy nerves.

‘Course while I was thinking to myself, they decided to stop serving beer, and then I was really pissed off. It was like those Princeton kids had come to my house, neglected to take off their shoes at the front door, drank all my beer, not tipped my in-house bartender, and messed up my azalea bushes on their way out. Or something like that, I’m sorry I haven’t totally worked out the analogy.

Moral of the story: Columbia, buy more beer. I’ll hit you back man, I swear.

Michael Shannon is a Columbia College senior majoring in sociology.
Sports@columbiaspectator.com