Bowl Job
Happy New Year! Welcome to two thousand and sick.
New Year’s has alway seemed like a superfluity to me. I suppose you need it to form the the outer border of the holiday week, but by the time the actual day comes, you sort of wish you could put it in the bank for sometime when there’s better weather. Especially given the odds of your not feeling very well that day.
This year, then, should have seemed even more over-the-top, with the official holiday coming on the January 2nd. Usually, you can assuage your various New Year’s Day maladies with comfort foods and bowl games, but this year there were no bowl games on New Year’s Day to serve as a Cotton-y/Rosey/Fiesta-ive/Sugary/Orangular (it’s a word, shut up) cushion on Sunday. Fine. The gym was closed all day anyway, so I didn’t have to embarrass myself there. We just took a long walk for some marginally-needed items, and awaited Monday.
Because Monday was Bowl Game Day. I started nipping at the bowl game bottle early, as we do here on the west coast when there are interesting games in the eastern time zone. My plan was to check out the inconsequential games emanating from north Florida - the ones that seem like they should be a tropical vacation but, since they’re played in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, are most often chilly teases with mushy fields to play on. If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll know I would be pointing all day to the Fiesta Bowl contest between Notre Dame and my Buckeyes.
I had received an email from the Seattle cell of the nefarious al-Buqai organization that we would be meeting at a sports bar next to the Space Needle, hoping for an explosive crowd for a 5:00 pm kickoff. My plan was to get a good buzz on from the morning games, go running with a gym workout in the early afternoon, then clean up and head for the sports bar for the evening orgy, two rust belt teams duking it out in the Sonoran desert.
As I was watching the early games, the annoying subscript banners that they fling onto the screen to cater to the ADD population that comprises the bulk of thier audience kept saying that the Fiesta Bowl kickoff would be at 4:30 Eastern, 1:30 Pacific. My presumption was that my guy was right, and the network that would be broadcasting the game was laughably wrong, so I sat and sipped coffee, getting up the energy to head for the gym.
Then, at about 1:00 they showed a live feed from Tempe of the OSU and Notre Dame players going through their warmups, and I started to panic. I went online and discovered that, indeed, I had only 20 minutes to get to the bar for kickoff. I quickly shaved, dressed, and rummaged through my closet for OSU gear. I came up with my wool marching band jacket, and headed for the car.
The game started badly, with Notre Dame taking the opening kickoff and scoring in less than 3 minutes. At that point we realized that we were sharing the sports bar with an equally large and vocal Domer contingent. As the ND guy scored, someone in their crowd pulled up a trumpet and started blasting their godawful fight song. I thought, “this is going to be an awfully long night if they can score at will, and this guy has any chops at all”.
As it turned out, though, his mouthpiece would stay dry well into the third quarter, as we dominated the game. I tried, at one point, to venture over to their side of the bar to photograph the musician, but he wouldn’t reveal himself, and someone gently but firmly made it clear that I should quickly return to the OSU side of the venue.
The outcome was extremely satisfying, as I had garnered a couple of bets from my business contacts in the upper midwest, where Catholic Notre Dame fans run as thick and spearworthy as salmon used to run in the Columbia River.
The win also would seem to give me the latitude to watch the final two bowl games, Penn State vs Florida State in the Orange Bowl and Texas vs USC in the Rose, with a patronizing sense of detachment and noblesse oblige.
However. I revere the Rose Bowl, and love the bowl system. The folks who whine every year that college football should have a basketball-style playoff have never been around college football long enough to develop a sense for what makes it appealing. In the bowl system, those whose fall social schedule revolves around attending games and supporting their teams get to plan vacation trips 3-4 weeks ahead of the event, and head for some sunbelt city (except for the inexplicably-sanctioned Motor City, Liberty, and whatever that joke they play in Boise is called -bowls) to have a good time. They spend up to a week at the game venue partying and discovering a city that’s probably outside their normal purview, and, once the games are played, half the teams come home winners. The teams and bands and students also get an off-campus experience to savor through the bleak winter quarter. If that kind of thing appeals to you in the first place.
If there were a playoff, few traditional fans, and fewer students, would attend the 3 - 4 week marathon of games, and all but one team would suffer year-long frustration. Who would this benefit besides corporate sponsors and long-distance observers with no connection to a particular team and tradition, or the game itself?
Which brings us to tonight’s Rose Bowl. Well, it’s only half a Rose Bowl, because only one of the participants comes from the PAC-10/Big 10 traditional pairing. I feel it’s a desecration of hallowed ground for a Texas or Oklahoma to set foot in the Arroyo Seco, to insinuate their fly-over apostasy into Olympian real estate. And the ultimate indiscretion to win the damn game, as Texas has the last two years.
Here’s a link to better days, where you can hear a recording of my OSU marching band in the 1971 Rose Parade and the Doppler effect of my 21-year-old self crossing over from my childhood to … a childish arrested adulthood, for these last couple of days, anyway.
