Case,
I'm sitting here waiting for my shift to end as the nation's 237th birthday is about to kick into high gear with a whole lot of fireworks, beer, stale hot dogs and Lee Greenwood. The sun just went down, and sh*t is about to get real, but I'll be happy to avoid it. I'll get to an explanation of my aversion to the Fourth of July eventually, but I'd like to take this occasion to start a not-so-quick personal breakdown of the major holidays — major defined here as those for whom people smart enough not to go into newspapers can count on the day off. First up: New Year's Day.
It used to be one of my favorites. For the longest time, the first day of the year meant one thing: meaningful college football. Much like the conference for which the champion used to be a staple in the Cotton Bowl (itself a formerly meaningful thing), meaningful college football no longer exists. There seems to be about 87 bowl games spread out over what seems like the term of an average pregnancy. I don't know anymore because I quit watching. OK, that's not exactly true. I usually catch a little of the BCS title game each year, in which the Southeastern Conference's best team embarrasses some team from a place where the weather generally sucks, or sometimes the SEC's next-best team when there's no other suitable victim. I will go ahead and assume that by the time you read this, there will be a 64-team playoff in which Alabama is given an automatic bye to the final — because the Crimson Tide will annually deserve it, but also because Nick Saban (Google him) is so insufferable that roving packs of other insufferables would prefer their interactions were kept to a minimum.
Anyway, when I was a kid, New Year's Day consisted of four games. Four big games: The aforementioned Cotton Bowl — Southwest Conference (Google it) champ vs. at-large team; the Rose Bowl — Big Ten (Google it) champ vs. Pac-8 (Google it) champ; the Orange Bowl — Big 8/12 (Google it) champ vs. at-large team; and the Sugar Bowl — SEC champ vs. at-large team.
I used to LOVE waking up on New Year's and turning on the Cotton Bowl. Growing up in Arkansas, the SWC champ was always a well-known team, even in the days before ESPN and the Internet made every sports fan an expert on everything, so while I didn't follow college football like I did the NFL, there was a familiarity that made the game more enjoyable than most. The Cotton Bowl usually ended around lunch, which was cool because I've always been a fan of (and an expert on) lunch. We never had a traditional meal on New Year's, but everything your Grandma Pallister touches turns to culinary gold. Whatever I ate each New Year's was great, and that's my expert opinion.
Once lunch was fully digested, it was close to kickoff time for the Rose Bowl (the "Granddaddy of them all"). The Rose Bowl was my least favorite game because I never knew anything about the Pac-8 champ. If you lived anywhere outside the West Coast back then, you never had the chance to see West Coast teams play. Come to think of it, that hasn't changed. Also, there was the boring brand of football the Big Ten played. Come to think of it, that hasn't changed either.
After another break in the action during which I ate an awesome Grandma Pallister dinner (or a couple of microwave burritos if I was feeling independent) and then likely a second lunch for dessert, the Orange Bowl kicked off the primetime slate, and back then, slate meant TWO WHOLE GAMES ON AT ONCE! The Sugar Bowl was played at the same time. Now, I have fond memories of watching the Orange Bowl, as Oklahoma, the primary Big 8/12 team of the time, always seemed to be involved. I don't remember the Sugar Bowl well, and listen carefully as I explain the reason why. Back then, TV was what you would call limited. I'm talking about a time before cable (I just realized we may have advanced past that by the time you read this. Ugh, I'm old.). Yes, I lived in that dark age. Anyway, channels were limited, and so was the means by which you could access them. The TV controller was not a thing. If the channel needed to be changed, it fell to the youngest person in the room to physically move his body toward the TV and with random hand motions manually turn a knob in various directions. I was ALWAYS the youngest person in the room growing up, and I spent way too much time doing the channel-changing bidding of older family members. So, when the sun went down on New Year's, I wasn't about to change the channel when your Grandma and Grandpa otherwise didn't care what I watched. Those nights would be spent with the Orange Bowl on and the Sugar Bowl a distant memory. Every once in a while the broadcast of the Orange Bowl would flash a score of the Sugar Bowl, but by then I had eaten my second dinner and I was comfortable on the couch.
Once the final games had ended, there usually was a general sense who the nation champion would be. But since there was no predetermined "championship game," there always remained a little mystery — the kind that made people buy newspapers (Google it) in the ensuing days. That mystery made at least a couple of the New Year's Day games special, as the top two teams in the country rarely squared off. Again, I was never a big college football fan, but New Year's Day was fun. The games had meaning, but not the type of MEANING that results from a be-all, end-all game played days after every other school's season has ended and makes people commit genital-related felonies at late-night burger joints (don't Google that). These days, all the meaningless bowl games are spread out for the sake of TV ratings. I think the Rose Bowl is the only one of the Big Four still played on the first day of the year. Maybe the Sugar Bowl. I still don't care about the Sugar Bowl, even though I can effortlessly turn to the channel it's on. The Cotton Bowl is now a mid-level bowl. The Orange Bowl is currently tied to the ACC (Google it), which means the game, like football in the ACC, is not worth watching.
As I got older and the sports landscape changed, New Year's Day lost its meaning as a great day of football, and thus a great holiday. Eventually, New Year's morphed into the hangover holiday, which it remains for many Americans.
At the current time, New Year's reminds me that I'm not getting any younger. It also reminds me that one should take certain things into consideration when deciding on a career. New Year's Day now usually means a slow day spent in the newsroom, occasionally peering over at the bank of TVs with wall-to-wall bowl games that have no personal meaning and only register if I can write a creative (if only to me) headline hours later and reminiscing about what it used to be like before I walk home 20 miles uphill.
OK, all that made me hungry.
Next up: Easter
Love,
Dad
