College football has long had a penchant for unparalleled grandeur, as if orchestrated by an anonymous overlord plucking the strings to tradition-rich sporting cinema that blends opulence with local exclusivity. Now, it is taking its theatre on tour, where London’s greatest stage beckons.
It is gameday, on rivalry weekend, in the city of Lawrence, Kansas. The sun has barely yawned upon rising and we are in transit to see if the Kansas Jayhawks can snap their run of 16 consecutive defeats to Kansas State.
A camel’s hump hill of near-roller coaster up-and-down inevitability approaches, beyond which the horizoning view is a little obscure. It comes with a notion of anticipation, dramatised-expectation I later found myself recalling while watching the car chase at the conclusion of Leonardo Di Caprio’s new film ‘One Battle After Another’, where the amplified steepness of each slope promises and yet veils every ensuing moment of delayed climax. A spectacle was on the other side, you could feel it. Somewhere above, the overlord was playing stirring music to accompany its latest college scene.
As we finally crept to the top of the road, a revamped David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium presented itself, hogging the landscape as the glistening centre piece to a contrastingly-subtle, quiet town dictated by its college sport culture.
“People don’t come to Kansas unless you have a very specific reason,” said Deputy Athletics Director – Chief Strategy Officer Collin Sexton.
