In my formative years as a sportswriter, an era archaeologists characterize as “pre-cable,” college football was a mom-and-pop business.

Players worked out in dark, dank rooms that you entered at your own risk. A luxury suite was a big room at the Ritz. Coaches ran camps to make ends meet. You could holster Texas’ media guide in your back pocket.

Nowadays, your program simply isn’t competitive if you don’t own an indoor practice facility or a video board the size of a battleship.

College football has become a Fortune 500 business, with budgets big enough to embarrass a bailed-out banker. An NCAA commission recently concluded spending is out of control. Next thing you know, they’ll tell us Tex Mex is bad for you and teen drivers are scary.

The economic corruption of college football over the last three decades continues unimpeded, along with the infestation of agents and the commercialization of “student athletes.” Don’t even get me started on the BCS.

And despite all its many and varied issues, I love it still. God help me.

Pro football is a great diversion on Sundays and Monday nights, and it gives players something to do after their eligibility is up.

But on the whole, give me out-of-state Winnebagos in the parking lot and a rivalry on the line.

Give me Big Bertha and the Aggie War Hymn and Rice’s MOB in its heyday, forming a fire hydrant for Reveille’s pleasure.

Give me a stadium half-orange and half-red, a Ferris wheel peeking over the rim and the smell of corn dogs in the air.

Give me caravans up and down I-35, flags waving, bumper stickers screaming, history roiling.

Give me the opportunity to write another lead like this one:

“A longhorn got loose on the Fairgrounds on Saturday morning, breaking free from the pens on a rollicking open-field run before he was brought down by several policemen, including one on a motorcycle and another with a lasso.

“It was the last good run by a Longhorn all day.”

You can’t get that kind of material at a venue vacuum- packed like JerryWorld.

You can’t get pro rivalries remotely as intense as even the most routine college brand. Sure, they pop up occasionally. Usually depending on whether a Ryan is one of the head coaches in question.

For nearly 40 years, the media have insisted the Cowboys still have a rivalry with the Redskins.

But let’s face it: George Allen is dead, and Dan Snyder is not bringing him back. Presumably.

In college football, it doesn’t matter who the coaches or players are, or how long anyone’s been dead. Ohio State could hire Robert Fulghum as its football coach, and Michigan fans would burn All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten to keep warm at the tailgate.

Florida vs. Georgia. Alabama vs. Auburn. USC vs. UCLA. Army vs. Navy. Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State. Texas vs. OU. Texas vs. Texas A&M.

Give me these storylines. Give me a coach who goes back to his alma mater only to regret it. Give me a player living up to his brother’s name. And his father’s. And his grandfather’s.

Give me a wife on one side of the rivalry and a husband on the other.

College football has left me with all those images and many, many more. None of it has been improved one whit by ramped-up spending or bigger boxes or more expensive coaches. These are real issues that must be addressed, before we choke on our hypocrisy.

Until then, college football remains a sport to be treasured. Some ills we learn to live with. Shoot me. I’m not giving up enchiladas, either.