Dropping Bonds on the Series
By Andrew Kessler
Sports Columnist

One of the biggest college football games of the year is happening on Saturday, an absolute battle that will most likely come down to the wire. “What?” you ask. The Big 12 championship game isn’t this weekend. Michigan-Ohio State. is still a few weeks away. It’s not almost New Year’s. We’re still more than a month and a half away from the BCS Bowls and the National Championship game. While all this is true, there is a game this weekend that, as far as the students in these parts are concerned, is as big as all of the major contests just mentioned. “Where is this game being played ?”, you might ask. Well, aren’t you lucky, aren’t you in for a treat, because it is taking place right here in your own backyard. Hopefully you’ll take advantage of that.

The “battle of sixth street” between Pomona-Pitzer and CMS is rolling into Claremont on Saturday. While this game holds little interest nationally, and absolutely no bearing on the BCS, it is going to be a great college football game. It is what college football is all about: two teams who are bitter rivals playing one another in a game that has tremendous meaning for both clubs. For P-P, a win means a .500 season and their first triumph over their archrivals since ’99. For CMS, a win means a continuation of their undefeated season and keeps their improbable national playoff hopes alive.

While no one can argue that the overall level of play in this match-up will be as high as in any Division I game this Saturday, the intensity, the passion and the emotion will be as great if not greater. No one has an athletic scholarship; next to no one is going to play professionally; people simply play for “the love.” This is certainly not something that can always be said of Division I or of professional athletics. Seeing people play the game they love, particularly when it is the great game of football, is something that is well worth watching. Being a student at any of the Claremont Colleges, there are not a lot of opportunities to see your school play games of this magnitude or meaning. When one comes along, it is something that should be celebrated, embraced and enjoyed by the entire community. You know that the players on both sides are going to pour their hearts and bodies into the game. I just hope that the rest of the people involved with the five colleges do so as well.