It's that time of year - time to realize that there aren't any more Saturdays to be filled with great match-ups like USC-UCLA, Notre Dame-Michigan, or LSU-Florida. It hits me, and I fall directly into a funk. Not a George Clinton kind of funk, but the kind of funk that makes me a miserable person to be around. I'm not 100% sure why I get this way, maybe it's because I don't have much of a life otherwise. Or maybe it's because I just love the games.
Some low-rate college football fans call them 'meaningless' bowl games. They have the same complaints year after year - there are too many, they don't count for anything, no one wants to watch Minnesota play Texas Tech, blah blah blah, gripe, moan, complain. They've got it wrong - bowl games are a great ending to the best sports season.
We have great match-ups we will never see during the regular season, like UCLA versus Florida State in the Emerald bowl. If this game happened in September, we'd be all over it, Brent Musberger blathering on about the historic implications. Play the same game in December, suddenly it's beneath some to watch it - both teams spurned as mediocre has-beens by fickle fans. These are the same type of people that'll come over to your house and drink your Budweiser for free, but later complain about how bad it is when they're out with their high-class friends drinking Heineken.
Well, screw the lot of you, I want to watch them all. More bowl games means one thing to me - more college football. And more college football, even if it's Northern Illinois playing TCU, is better than anything else on television. Rice is going to their first bowl game in 40 years, playing Troy in the New Orleans bowl. It'll be on ESPN2 and I'll be watching it. The day after that it's a triple header when South Florida plays East Carolina, then New Mexico plays San Jose State and then Tulsa plays Utah. Ah, the indulgence of the holiday season!
NBA fans don't complain about the fact that their teams play around 900 games, take three days off in the middle of July and then start all over again. Everyone in the NBA makes the playoffs don't they? Do you see NBA fans complaining about that? What about Major League Baseball fans? 30% of their league is eliminated from the playoffs before the season starts since teams like the Yankees buy the best players. Baseball keeps extending the season, and in the next few years, you know they'll be figuring out a 'bowl' system for baseball where everyone goes to warm cities to play during winter because 162 games plus playoffs every year aren't enough for fans.
I don't go out on New Year's Eve anymore. I'll have some drinks with some close friends, plus, Miami is playing Nevada in the MPC Computers Bowl! New Year's Eve is chock full of amateurs who don't drink all year, then decide they can drink like fish for a few hours and handle it like us professionals. They end up puking on your shoes and trying to drive home even though they can't walk. Experience that versus watching the chance to see Miami lose on a blue field in Idaho? Heck no!
New Year's Day is a better day of pure gluttony than Thanksgiving with a total of six bowl games including Nebraska versus Auburn in the Cotton Bowl. Nothing more to do than to lay around watching football, snacking, and for most of you, recovering from your 'amateur night' exploits.
Maybe it's best that college football season has been extended by a week by the BCS Championship game. It's putting off the inevitable end of the season. For someone like me the realization that it's the end of college football season is like your seven year old kid after he's come down from the high of drinking all that caffeine and sugar. Lethargic and cranky, wondering why someone loaded him up with all that stuff in the first place, and why there isn't more.
And some of you deem these games as meaningless? Perhaps you'd be better served by the NBA.