(FORTUNE Magazine) – If the financial markets have been crazy over the past couple of months, college football has been sheer lunacy. For much of the season, Ohio State looked like a solid No. 1--then the Buckeyes choked against Michigan State. As FORTUNE went to press, there was a bottleneck of three undefeated teams atop the polls: Tennessee, UCLA, and Kansas State (never mind unbeaten Tulane, the ultimate Cinderella story, at No. 13!). If all three win the rest of their games, that could make for some ugliness at year's end; after all, there's only room for two teams in the Fiesta Bowl. It's enough to drive serious fans bonkers--especially high-powered executives who live and die with their boys.

There's an old saying that colleges are good at three things: providing parking for the faculty, sex for the undergrads, and football for the alumni. How those things are ranked depends, of course, on who's doing the talking. But if you ask big-dog alumni, football at their alma maters is nearly as important as making the next quarter. Make that as important. Make that MORE important. But it's not the crowd that keeps them coming home. It's not the sideline access. It's that these Saturday afternoons are sepia-tinted journeys back to a simpler, carefree time--a time without lawsuits, gadflies, or the IRS. It shows on their faces, as you can see....

WARREN BUFFETT UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

Warren Buffett's love for the Cornhuskers stretches back to the 1941 Rose Bowl. "We played Stanford," recalls Berkshire Hathaway's billionaire CEO, who goes to a couple of games each year. "I can't remember exactly who was in the Nebraska backfield, but I do remember we lost the game." Buffett says his favorite game is probably the showdown against Oklahoma in 1971, which Nebraska won 35-31. "Johnny Rodgers had that incredible runback," he says. "A great game, but there have been a lot of them." And this year? An 8-3 record might seem disappointing after such a long, dominant run. "Maybe people are a bit spoiled," Buffett says. "We've had some great years in the '90s." So have you, Warren. So have you.

PHIL KNIGHT UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

In 1972 the University of Oregon Ducks became the nation's first college football team to wear Nikes. This according to Duck fan numero uno and Nike CEO Phil Knight: "Back then we kind of used the Oregon teams as a testing lab. We began with the track team and then moved into other sports, including football." Knight, a 1959 Oregon grad, goes to most games, home and away. "We've had some great ones here--Mel Renfro, Dan Fouts, and Ahmad Rashad," he says. "This year's team is pretty good too; we're 8-2." Must be the shoes.

WENDELL MURPHY NORTH CAROLINA STATE

When it comes to N.C. State football, hog magnate Wendell Murphy of Murphy Family Farms doesn't mess around. "I go to all the games--home and away," he says simply, "ever since I graduated in 1960." Murphy says he loves this year's Wolfpack, which still includes members of the 1994-95 team that came from behind to beat Mississippi State in the Peach Bowl (let's hope they were freshmen then). "We made the Georgia Dome a very loud place," he says with a chuckle. Not often that a hog farmer speaks so fondly about a pack of wolves.

DAVE POTTRUCK UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

No one has stronger ties to his team than Dave Pottruck does to Penn. After all, the co-CEO of Charles Schwab (and a new Intel board member) was a starting noseguard at Penn and took the Penn Football Club Award--given for excellence in both academics and football--in 1969, his senior year; at right, you can see him taking out former all-American (and later Hill Street Blues star) Ed Marinaro of Cornell. Favorite game? That's easy. Forget about the dozens he's watched as an alumnus: "It was my junior year, homecoming game against Princeton. We hadn't beaten them in nine years, and we took it to them 19-14."

J. KIRK THOMPSON UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

"I grew up in a small town--Newark, Ark.--and I remember when I was a boy, I'd listen to Arkansas football games on Saturday nights and keep stats," says Kirk Thompson, CEO of trucking company J.B. Hunt. "I've been a fan since we won the national championship back in '64, and after that through thick and thin." Thompson graduated from Arkansas in 1978 with an accounting degree, and figures that over the past 35 years he has attended, listened to, or watched on TV every game his team has played. Well, he missed one: "I couldn't help it--I was in London at the time." They probably just didn't get "Soooooooeeeeeeey PIG" over there.

LODWRICK COOK LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

Why does Lod Cook love LSU football? Well, he went there--twice. "I got a B.S. in math in 1950, went into the Army for three years, and then came back to Baton Rouge and got a B.S. in petroleum engineering," says the former Arco CEO, now co-chairman of Global Crossing, a company that lays suboceanic fiber-optic cable. LSU's four-year-old alumni center is festooned with Cook pictures and memorabilia, which makes sense, since he was the force behind it. But as Cook says, "Having a winning football team is important, but you can take it too far. Some alumni say they're going to quit giving if the team doesn't start winning. I try not to be so rabid about it. We've had a tough season...but we'll be back."

THE EXCITE GUYS STANFORD UNIVERSITY

As you can doubtless tell from this picture, none of Excite's founders (from left to right: Mark Van Haren, Joe Kraus, Graham Spencer, Martin Reinfried, Ben Lutch, and Ryan McIntyre) played football at Stanford. But two of them, Kraus and Van Haren, played in the infamously wacky Stanford band. "When I was a freshman, I told them I wanted to play the drum," says Kraus. "They told me they didn't have a drum for me. So I got an old ice bucket and duct-taped it over my head. I beat it all game long. I got an unbelievable headache, but that's how I became a member of the band." Oh. What else? "Well, when we played at Cal, the students used to throw frozen fruit at us. It would really hurt if you got hit, so one year we got golf clubs--three woods, I think they were--and we whaled those oranges right back in the crowd. It was great." Genius has many faces.

TOM HICKS UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

Tom Hicks spent this year watching one of the greatest running backs in college football history: Ricky Williams. Williams, who may well have broken Tony Dorsett's career rushing record by the time you read this, also happens to be the front-runner for the Heisman. "Ricky is a great kid," say Hicks. "He's a team-oriented superstar. Earl Campbell could just knock people over, but Ricky has his own style. He's faster, and he can catch the ball." Hicks, who's on University of Texas' board of regents, was instrumental in bringing in Williams' new coach, Mack Brown (seen here on the left). And though the team's 7-3 record is better than expected, Hicks says you ain't seen nothing yet: "We've been asleep for 20 years. We're going to bring this program all the way back."

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Chanoine Webb