As millions of Americans tune into the start of another college football season, Breitbart contributor Tony Lee points out that its traditions have much more meaning than just great sports.

This week, one is again reminded that America would be a better place if it its citizens assimilated into the melting pot as seamlessly as college football fans embrace their traditions. Technology, multiculturalism, and the breakdown of families and civic organizations have left Americans with fewer shared experiences, which makes the start of college football even more special.

Every fall, college football–and all of its unique traditions, fight songs, history, pageantry, hatreds, revelry–comes back, and it is a welcome constant in an world of uncertainty where traditions are becoming rare and fads more popular.

Nearly a decade ago, I was walking out of a Target–with my Alabama cap on–when I heard strangers yelling “Roll Tide!” I instantly turned around, smiled, and we chatted for considerable length about SEC football as if we were lost friends, united by a love for Alabama football, the SEC, and college football.

Team. Conference. Sport.

I felt then like I did when I went to Europe for the first time and my friends and I saw a group of Americans on two occasions while we were lost in Germany and France and subsequently went out to dinner with them, as they seemed as happy to see us as we were them.

…On Twitter, at bars, in living rooms, and in stadiums all across the country, fans–of small schools and big schools, doormats and blue bloods, powerhouses and pesky spoilers, service academies and religious institutions–are all sharing in a common culture, some united as much by a hatred for their opponents as a love for their respective teams.

And through these shared passions, Americans get an opportunity to restore a sense of community and a shared culture that is dissipating. America once had stronger civic organizations, families, churches and even schools where they were taught assimilation and an “informed” and “learned” patriotism, something which President Ronald Reagan always spoke of as being essential to a healthy nation. Americans watched the same television shows together on the same nights at the same time–and then talked about them the next day at work. Americans went to movie theaters together and watched feature films when they were released.