Wilbon's column from today's Post

[fsquid]

Bowled Over
By Michael Wilbon
Friday, January 2, 2009; 10:35 AM

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.

I'd never taken a long walk on New Year's Day. Never been bargain hunting on New Year's Day, never been to a beach on New Year's Day.

I've never been to church, never been to a restaurant, never been to a friend's house. Never, not once in 39 years of single life, did I ever have a date on New Year's Day. Never, not once in 11 years of married life, have I ever taken my wife to dinner on New Year's Day.

One thing and only one thing has mattered for every single New Year's Day of my entire life: bowl games. Didn't matter who was playing; I watched bowl games. Virtually everybody I knew has watched bowl games. Started at noon, maybe 11 a.m., ended at midnight or thereabout. Either I watched on TV or covered them for this newspaper for a total of, oh, 42, 43 years, something like that.

Until yesterday.

Sometime around 2 p.m. on New Year's Day 2009, after watching the first two periods of the NHL's Winter Classic outdoors in Chicago's Wrigley Field, I announced that I was leaving the house to take a drive. My wife, astounded, said, "You've never left the house on New Year's Day in the whole time I've known you. Is there something wrong with you?"

Well, yeah, something was seriously wrong. The bowl games, for the first time in my life, didn't matter. The people who run college football had succeeded, finally, in killing New Year's Day. Instead of college playoff games commanding our attention, we were left with a bunch of BCS exhibitions that meant absolutely nothing. I didn't know what games were being played at what times, nor in several cases, what day. Not until I sat down and started typing these words did I know that the Fiesta Bowl, played right here in Arizona where I'm spending the first week of this New Year, won't be played until Monday, Jan. 5. I'm now guessing -- seriously, this is a total guess -- the Sugar Bowl will be played Friday night. The Cotton Bowl, I'm told, has been moved out of the early New Year's Day slot to the day after.

Why? The Cotton Bowl hasn't been a game of consequence for years.

The Orange Bowl, the only game played in prime time on New Year's night, featured two teams not ranked in the Top 10. The Rose Bowl, as we all suspected going in, was a total non-contest. It's fine for Penn State to play Southern Cal; it just should have been a 1 vs. 8 quarterfinal game in the national college football playoff. As is, the Granddaddy of 'em all amounted to an exhibition, too. I watched 20 minutes, max.

Initially, I figured it was just me. But it wasn't. Every guy I called who traditionally has his butt bolted to the sofa in front of the TV for a dozen hours on New Year's Day had essentially the same story. They watched a little, then checked out, found other stuff to do. Or they watched the NHL game at Wrigley. Or the bowl game was on the background while they answered e-mail. Seems the folks entrusted to oversee college football have so worried themselves into a tizzy over the sacredness of the regular season they've now let the post-season go straight to Hades.

And with no NFL games, with no NBA games, New Years' Day as a sporting tradition has gone south as well. The Orange Bowl couldn't hold me for 10 minutes. And while it's a function of the economy more than what's happening with college football, it was impossible not to repeatedly notice, with every camera shot of the stands, how empty the stadium formerly known as Joe Robbie was. Then again, Virginia Tech vs. Cincinnati is hardly one of those matchups that forces people to run to the nearest ticket broker.

Because there's no playoff and only a BCS Championship game on Jan. 8, the implicit message is that nothing leading up to that matters, not even New Years' Day games. We're told by the BCS that Oklahoma and Florida are the two best teams in the country. So, why watch Southern Cal if they have no chance? Why watch Alabama play Utah (another perfect No. 1 vs. No. 8 playoff matchup) if the Tide has no chance to finish No. 1?

New Year's Day 2009 was such an enormous disappointment that I'm now hoping President-elect Barack Obama wasn't teasing when he said he might just throw his weight around to pressure the powers-that-be into staging a playoff.

What New Year's Day should have had was either the four quarterfinal games (Oklahoma-Penn State, Florida-Texas Tech, Texas-Utah, Alabama-USC). You don't think 'Bama vs. USC in single elimination would have been riveting, must-see TV on New Year's Day? You'd plan your day around that game.

Assuming the top four seeds advanced, we'd get Oklahoma vs. Alabama and Texas vs. Florida in the semis.

If you want it wrapped up by Jan. 8 to clear the way for the NFL, then New Year's Day could have been national semifinal day. Two huge games, one played in the Rose Bowl or Fiesta Bowl, the other played in the Orange Bowl.

You think the ratings for those doggies wouldn't have been through the sky?

As is, we had one fairly lousy game in the Orange Bowl New Year's night, unopposed. No Sugar Bowl to click over to check on. I called one of my best friends, J.A. Adande who writes for ESPN.com, to ask him when the Fiesta Bowl would be played. "It's not tomorrow?" he asked. No. When told Jan. 5, he howled. When I filed this column I had no idea of the teams in the Fiesta Bowl, an event I've covered five or six times, and excitedly.

Here's the big, big problem for the bowl people, whether or not they ever want to acknowledge it: Sports, for me, are vocation and avocation. Same for Adande. And if we don't know who's playing and when, it's not a good thing for the bowls. We are, or should be, exactly the kind of fanatics the bowl games court: alums of a BCS school (Northwestern) who buy tickets and jerseys, and satellite TV packages to watch obscure games during the regular season. I don't think we were the exception Thursday; I think we were the rule. The ratings for the entire day will still be fairly high because there's nothing else to watch on Jan. 1, because everybody except the NHL has backed away because the college game has owned New Year's Day on TV for 50 years. (I swear, if TNT had put a Law & Order "mini-marathon" on instead of "Bones" re-runs all day I'd have watched it and never even bothered checking in on the Orange Bowl.)

Those of you who like the BCS system are probably asking why playoff proponents think these bowl games matter less now than they did 25 years ago. Fair question. But the answer is easy. We're a culture now that expects, at the end of any competitive process, to have a winner declared in the arena. "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" even get that. You don't have a major event if you haven't reduced the competition along the way and tried to produce a winner. The last competitors standing have to at least confront one another in competition. Arguing it out isn't good enough anymore in sports. We don't want to be told Florida and/or Oklahoma are better than Southern Cal; we expect the Gators and/or Sooners to prove it.

So, by the way, do the Gators and Sooners.

Used to be, I actually climbed in bed relatively early on New Year's Eve night because I got up early to be ready for the very first bowl game. I knew it was a long day and I'd need my energy. Now, at least I know I can stay out as late as I want on New Year's Eve because the lousy state of affairs in college football have made New Year's Day the perfect time to catch up on my sleep.

Post a Comment

[BBoyd21]

i hate to say it but i agree with wilbon's column. College Football has become boring around bowl time and with most of the bcs games ending up blowouts the last few years (outside of boise st vs oklahoma) and the biggest problem is that there are way too many bowl games as is. All you have to do is win 6 games and you become elligble for a game that most fans wouldnt care for (like the texas bowl and etc) Maybe things will change, but i doubt it because as long as big sponsors dish out money to the ncaa, the longer the wait for a true playoff system and a better way of solving a system (the bcs) that has become the biggest joke of them all. Thank goodness the nfl playoffs are starting and college basketball is starting to get good again.

[J0nnD0ugh]

I was thinking of making this the topic for my first blog entry. I switched nights w/someone on NY's Eve/Day for the 1st time in my adult life. Its amazing there were only 4 games yesterday & 2 of them didn't have a ranked team involved.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Great article. I was about to make a thread asking people here if they just didn't care anymore. It's obvious I am not alone.

[studbucket]

I like Wilbon, and I agree with the sentiments, but I don't get just leaving the house and not watching football. We will be missing it all offseason, and much of the country never had the privilege to see Shonn Greene or Javon Ringer, and they may have missed a great Clemson-Nebraska game. All of those are enough of a reason for me to watch those bowl games, if it is lamer than it used to be.

[PSU_DW2]

I pretty much agree with Wilbon's column. To me, the game has been overrun by special interests in the last three seasons.

I think moving the Cotton Bowl to January 2nd is a disgrace. It didn't feel right January 2nd. Ole Miss beat Texas Tech, which wasn't all that surprising. But it didn't have that same Cotton Bowl feeling. They are moving the Cotton Bowl to a new stadium I believe in 2010 too.

The last "great" college football game I can remember watching was in 2006, the Texas - USC Rose Bowl "National Championship". The last game before they started changing all the clock rules to "speed up the game" or whatever. It was Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Vince Young. It was an incredible spectacle, better and more exciting than any game you would see in the pros. Remember the Reggie Bush lateral on the long run? It didn't work out, but man was that exciting!! The game felt so "right" then still. Everyone was ready for it and the game didn't disappoint. It brought out the best in college football.

The college football bowl season to me doesn't feel the same and it has everything to do with the new rules that have been implemented by the BCS system in terms of bowl scheduling and on the field commercial-inspired rules since that great 06 Rose Bowl. Even the fact that the BCS Championship Game was played on January 3rd in 06, and now it's played on January 8th. It's spread out so much now it's kinda getting ridiculous.


If you are not going to have a playoff system, then play traditional New Year's Day Bowls on New Year's Day. Maybe play a game like the Utah - Bama Sugar Bowl on January 2nd, and maybe play the BCS Championship on Janurary, 3rd like in 06, but no later than that. Then the National Championship doesn't have that holiday feeling it used to. The powers that be have (whether they intended to or not) made a mockery of the game. To take away incidental 5 yard facemasks and take away 5 yard running into the kicker penalties, common penalties in the amateur game, is frankly asinine. To move the kickoff back farther which give teams shorter fields (not good for defences trying to gain field position), is unnecessary and could make games longer than before anyway. To take away the referee initiated 25 second clock, well I have already said what I have to say in regards to that.

But all those rules are nothing compared to what running the clock when teams run out of bounds has done to the game (except in the final two minutes of every half, sometimes, when the clock operator feels like it, of course)

Teams have had so many less possessions this season that no game really feels over to me. Even in 06 (and 07 bowl games), the clock rules were bad, but they didn't affect the drives themselves. I don't like reasons like "the games are getting too long" so we are going to use running clocks to solve that problem. So was that USC - Texas game 06 Rose Bowl game "too long"? Did USC really win instead of Texas if someone deemed that game to be "too long" in the off season? Teams should be able to throw the ball out of bounds whenever the hell they want to and not have to worry about that causing the clock to run on out of bounds plays the next season. It takes away strategic aspects of the game. Ask great coaches like Urban Meyer. He would agree with that assessment. But he has to be cordial since it's still "fair".

I said this before the season started in regards to these rules, and nothing that has happened this season has surprised me much or changed my mind about how the rules would water down the game. The bowl system used to be fine, great even, before the BCS destroyed most of its tradition. Still, I will always watch and love college football and watch my team play its big games, but I am determined to help bring the glory of the game back to what it was up until that 2006 Rose Bowl National Championship.

[fsquid]

I had the games on the in background on New Years while I took down Christmas decorations. Can't remember doing that.

[Cardot]

I am about the same age as Wilbon and totally agree. Back in the 80's, New Years day was a really special day for football fans. It was the only "wall to wall" day of football the entire year. At that time, the NFL did not have a sunday night game, and pregame shows only started 30 minutes ahead of the early game.

I hate the BCS for several reasons, but one is how they have ruined New Years day. I can recall when there would be 6 or 7 quality games including all the BCS bowls. When they moved the 1 vs. 2 game to a day later, that was ok, but now they have gone way too far.

Now when I think of New Years day, I look forward to the NHL's Winter Classic.