Sideline Cut: Back in 1992, UCG, as they were then known, won the Sigerson Cup for the first time since 1984. For a week or so afterwards, there was an almost festive atmosphere around a campus populated by a generally morose and sneezing student body which favoured damp Aran sweaters worn over Nirvana T-shirts and jeans that once had been blue.

UCG seemed like a sprawling college then and, as is the way of these things, the beautiful, original university building was used primarily for administrative purposes while most of the action took place along the concourse, a vaguely Eastern Bloc-style corridor with steamed up windows that led to vast auditoriums capable of housing mass lectures on the arts, commerce and sciences. (Engineers were, mercifully, locked away some place else).

But that Sigerson victory, over a highly fancied Queen's team featuring James McCartan, had the effect of making a fairly big, modern college seem intimate and together for a short time. It reawakened the sense of a college with a tradition, of a place to take pride in. There were a couple of lads from home on the team, Diarmuid Keon and Sylvester Maguire, who would go on to win an All-Ireland medal with Donegal later that year. I wasn't at the Sigerson Cup final myself, probably wasn't even aware that it was on. But apparently it had been a great football day in Pearse Stadium - then a mausoleum of a ground.

I do remember on the bus journey down that Sunday hearing the crackling football commentary featuring a delighted Jack Mahon. It was clear the UCG victory meant a lot to the institution and even to the city: it was hard, in 1992, to imagine the football revolution that would sweep across Galway under John O'Mahony six years later. But UCG was primarily a west of Ireland college then and with a lot of lads coming in from Mayo, Donegal, Roscommon and Sligo, GAA inevitably featured strongly. Tony "the Horse" Regan was a mythical figure even to those who had no interest in sport, the omnipotent king of field sport who influenced generations of Gaelic games players who passed through the college.

Maybe there were some who saw in that victory a kind of last hurrah. The 1990s was a decade in which the old collegiate competitions went through a fundamental change.

When George Sigerson dedicated a cup in his name back in 1911, it soon settled into a rites of passage affair between what had been the old Queen's colleges in Dublin, Cork and Galway. Queen's of Belfast entered a team in 1923 but only became regular participants 10 years later. It was the 1960s before Trinity fielded a side and it was 1985 before Jordanstown featured on the schedule.

Breaking up the cosy hegemony meant fewer cups for the traditional colleges but with the broadening of third level education, it would have been nonsensical and elitist to continue excluding the former RTCs, who were leading the charge in the information technology sector.

IT Tralee made the most breath-taking impact on the competition, entering for the first time in 1996 and triumphing just two years later with a super team that included Séamus Moynihan, Pádraic Joyce and Jim McGuinness.

Since then, it seems that formidable college teams can blossom overnight, in both Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cup.

In 2003, the Fitzgibbon Cup featured a tantalising semi-final between Waterford IT and UCD. Some of the best hurlers in the game were on display that day: Waterford had JJ Delaney; UCD had Stephen Lucey. And it was great to be able to stand flush on the sideline and watch two fine teams battle it out for their college.

You could do that because the place was deserted. There may have been a couple of hundred people at the game, but that is probably a generous estimation. Even allowing for the fact that the competition was taking place in Athlone and that this was a Friday afternoon, it seemed like a shockingly low attendance. Compared to the Leinster Schools' rugby competition, another grand old theatre of schools sport to which old boys flock on bitterly cold winter afternoons, this prestigious Fitzgibbon Cup fixture was ghostly and lonesome.

There did not even seem to be much support from the competing colleges. Given the fanatical support that almost all levels of GAA activity can count upon, the lack of support was hard to fathom.

Here was a chance to see the greatest GAA players for a minuscule fee in a game of meaning. Rightly or wrongly, the scene seemed to suggest the terrible wasteland that any move towards professionalism would make of the GAA.

That is not to suggest the third level institutions are akin to professional teams.

However, it is no secret that clusters of talented hurlers and footballers do seem to attend particular colleges for one reason or another, thereby enabling that institution to produce teams loaded with talent.

It could be argued that there is nothing new in that. In 1972, UCG were able to produce a football half-back line that included Martin Carney and John O'Keeffe. And they didn't even win that year's competition!

However, that was just a fluke of talent and circumstance. It was what made the idea of a college team so attractive: that a group of exceptionally brilliant footballers might happen to pass through a college during the same period. There is no doubt the formation of many modern Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cup teams have been down to much more than happy chance.

There is no doubt that the third level competitions matter greatly to players. Ulster coaches have repeatedly said the experience of players winning national titles with their Ulster colleges could well have helped trigger the revolution at county level.

They are undoubtedly competitions with a great heritage and just as there are great club coaches, colleges have brilliant and dedicated GAA coaches also. And in terms of quality and profile, they appear to be going from strength to strength.

But perhaps they also help to highlight just what people want from the GAA. And perhaps they also reinforce the fact that when 80,000 people visit Croke Park this summer, it will not solely be to witness the tremendous players on show but rather to participate in a ritual and to enjoy and celebrate the sense of being who they are.

Deep down, people don't really want or need to see a brilliant full-forward line featuring the best from three counties. The demise of the Railway Cup as a popular event has indicated that. They want to see a full-forward line from their club or from their county, however good or limited that trio may be.

They want to see a team with meaning, a team that belongs to a place. And although the third-level competitions are rich in GAA lore, they do not exercise the same magical grip on the imagination as even the Hogan Cup or the All-Ireland club and senior championships. Colleges are transitory places.

So although the 1992 UCG team probably remain close by the fact of having achieved something genuinely special, the legacy of their achievement is essentially private. The entire point of the GAA is based on place and on belonging and to tamper with that principal would surely mean that many people would no longer be bothered watching.

Even if the teams are as good as the Fitzgibbon and Sigerson Cup sides doing battle this year.