American exceptionalism is a fairly controversial political notion, talked about for nearly 200 years, that the United States is unlike any other country in the world due to its “unique” history and form of government.

People of good will can be on either side of that discussion.

But the U.S. most certainly is exceptional in one aspect in the sports realm:

Its fascination with college football.

The 2014 college football began in earnest today, and the longer we are outside the U.S. the more exotic it becomes. I followed the results, off and on, but when you have been gone for four seasons, you lose touch.

And we already know all about the basic concept.

College football puzzles nearly everyone outside the U.S.  Canadians probably understand it, considering they have intercollegiate football, too. (Though I wonder how many Canadians know who won last season’s Vanier Cup.) Mexico may be aware of college football, being next door to El Norte.

But on the Old World side of the Atlantic? Pretty much universally ignored, is college football.

Notre Dame? That’s the name of the cathedral in Paris, right?

Washington State? That’s the part of the U.S. that isn’t the capital, right?

Boise State? I thought Boise was a city.

Rice? Are we talking about starches now?

Some of the more curious, among the sports-minded around the world, know U.S. college football exists. Some of them may have spent time at an American college.

(At The National, in Abu Dhabi, we have a honest-to-goodness Trojan in the room, a young Kuwaiti who has a degree in journalism from USC. I have been tempted several times to hold up my index and middle fingers — the USC “V for victory” — as I walk past him and declare, “Fight on!”)

But on the whole, if you were to get a random person from Britain, India, China, South Africa, Brazil … and told them about what happened in college football, in America, today, they would be astonished.

Crowds of 80,000, 90,000, 100,000? Games televised all day and into the night? To watch college boys play American football?

The reality that collegians are (not yet) professional football players further perplexes non-Americans. They instinctively want to frame the discussion in terms of soccer.

College football, then, must be some sort of lower division of American football, and it is, but what does not track are the numbers of Americans who watch these teams play — because in Brazil and China no one is going to watch a game between second-tier teams.

They also would be astonished, but perhaps captivated, by many of the traditions around the college game. The tailgate parties. The marching bands. The cheerleaders. The alumni in saddle shoes and sweaters. The heated rivalries of what to outsiders can seem like small and parochial cities.

No other sport is so quintessentially American as college football.

The NFL has the Super Bowl, which sparks a bit of worldwide recognition. Baseball, too, because of its clear relationship with cricket. Basketball is a global sport.

But college football, and the stir it causes inside the borders of the USA …

That truly is American exceptionalism in action.