When I was back in college, male students who chose not to join any of the Greek letter societies (fraternities as they are more commonly known) were often referred to as “barbarians” by those who had pledged. This was specially so in the University of the Philippines, where the battle to grab freshmen recruits reached epic proportions shortly after enrolment and didn’t die down until the start of the second semester.

But then there were already other options at that time — organizations (orgs) of different persuasions which were on the rise. Some were based on regional grounds, socio-political leanings, religious beliefs, special interests, and so-called guilds (economics society, etc.).

And then there were the athletes, who on principle were never actively recruited by fraternities or orgs for the simple reason that everyone felt they were better left alone in their own world. That their loyalty would always be to their coach and teammates and ultimately, the school that they were playing for, and it was hard to compete against that.

Besides, it would be unseemly for teammates to be on opposing sides during a campus war, which was quite common in those days. Perhaps not as brutally violent as that portrayed in the seminal local film “Batch '81,” but enough to scare the bejeezus out of any parents whose teenaged boys were not yet home at the appointed hour (remember, these were the days when there was curfew from 12 midnight to 4 a.m. – something you young seem to take for granted nowadays.

Nowadays, this symptom of exclusion is evident whenever the UAAP season rolls around and the first Ateneo-La Salle (or La Salle-Ateneo, depends on your points of view) game rolls around. Suddenly, anyone who isn’t part of these two tribes are often left to look in from the outside as the factions gear up and do righteous battle for the pride and honor of their particular color – blue or green, take your pick.

As an observer of such macho posturings most of my life (dating back to even the old NCAA when the quartet of previously all-boys’ schools that regularly did battle also included San Beda College and Letran), I was almost always struck by the incredulity of it all. Yes, I understood the concept of school pride, its relative importance and how much it is tied in to success in the sports arena but could not contemplate grown men still acting as if they were cheerleaders looking to attract the cute coed through prancing around at the games.

Maybe us “barbarians” or heathens would never understand how much winning means to the sides involved in the college wars simply because we were never immersed in such a culture from youth but nowadays, this spirit is imbued even for those who had grown up elsewhere and simply enrolled in these higher institutions of learning for educational purposes. Once inside the enclaves which harbor such exclusionary thoughts, they begin to adapt and are soon consumed by the mentality which mobilizes the throng.

Which also makes for great commerce: Just witness the annual ritual of complaints about prime seats being scalped for 20 times the face value on the tickets at these games. Or the primo bucks shelled out by advertisers to make sure you get wind of their latest promos or items they are offering for sale during the television coverage.

These are no longer mere sporting encounters – they have become spectacles in and of themselves, events which are staged for the pleasure of those whose self-worth (and often more than a few bucks) are tied in to the result of the contests.

Yes, us heathens would never understand, but that’s fine – each to his own happiness, each to his own device.

Let’s just watch the replay on high definition later tonight and see if we were somehow seen on camera supporting our beloved alma mater. Then somehow it would all be worth it.