If you have fifteen minutes, listen to this segment of The Sports Inferno, a sports radio talk show on Detroit’s 1270 WXYT. It’s worth your time. It features Mike Valenti addressing the problems of the Michigan State University football program after MSU’s dismal fourth-quarter collapse against Notre Dame.

No, that description was too sterile. He did not address the program’s problems; he tore the program to shreds. It was not the dispassionate analysis of a media observer; it was the overflowing emotion of a passionate fan who happens to host a radio talk show. He had been getting more and more disgusted by the wasted potential and bad losses accumulated by the Spartans, and the devastating loss to Notre Dame finally brought him to a boil. A tangible, powerful, irrepressible boil.

So Valenti boiled. He ranted for fifteen minutes straight. His co-host tried to interrupt him when his voice began to fail, and he refused to stop. His co-host tried again a few minutes later when his voice became even more hoarse, and he very pointedly told his co-host to let him finish. He left no doubt that he would let no one stop him from saying what he needed to say.

Clearly, it was just that: a need. The depth of emotion in his voice and in his words demonstrated beyond any doubt that he did not simply want to express his opinions; he needed to speak his piece. He needed not just to speak his mind; he needed to speak his heart.

And it was his heart that spoke for fifteen minutes. That was unmistakable. He expressed his deepest outrage at the failings of the MSU football program, but he could not have done it out of anger. Anger will make a man do remarkable things, but ultimately, he did not speak in an effort to destroy the program; he shouted himself hoarse in an exhausting effort to expose every crevice of every destructive element within Michigan State football.

What brings a man to that point? Love. Valenti loves Michigan State football.

Some may hesitate to assign that emotion and action to football, either because it doesn’t seem to fit the violently competitive nature of the sport or because they believe sports aren’t important enough to love; neither is true. A shallow fondness does not cause a man in Valenti’s position to break character, shut down his co-host, expose raw emotions and hit every last nerve he could hit; mere pleasant associations do not evoke a passionate point-by-point denunciation of a program’s failings, from the head coach down to the last walk-on player. It’s not the love one person can feel for another — such love should be on an entirely different level — but as Valenti demonstrated, it is love, and in some ways it can be nearly as deep.

That love was deep enough for Valenti to stand by the Spartans through disappointment after disappointment, and it was deep enough that he could no longer bear to watch that football program — his football program — self-destruct. He had to speak, he had to do what he thought would help salvage the program, and he did so with a level of passion not often witnessed in any venue for any reason. He did not observe the program’s failings as a bystander; he experienced them as offenses against a close personal friend. That has to be love. Any lesser word would be inadequate in the face of the emotion in his vehement words and in his failing voice.

And that is what makes college football such a beautiful sport.