As I write this, Alabama is slaughtering Notre Dame in the
national football championship bowl game. It is the 7th day of the
year. And I am irked.
I don’t really care who wins or loses. I grew up in the
metropolitan New York area where college football is considered “minor league”
to the pros. There is no real team to root for, except Rutgers, which gets an
occasional season of triumph.
Here in Oregon, it is different as Oregon and Oregon State
Universities are having great years. Even before the emergence of Oregon as a perennial
powerhouse, college football was huge and the Sunday Oregonian, the Portland
paper, gave several pages to the Oregon and Washington football teams.
But my time in Oregon is probably ending. I miss the East, I
miss having contact with the son I have there as much as I have joy in the
contact with the other son and his family who are on this coast.
But what is annoying is the football game is not on
broadcast television. It on ESPN and I can’t even get that since its not part
of the cable package here at my campgrounds. ABC, which owns ESPN, chose to
offer us “The Bachelor,” which is hardly a reality show, much less a show that
entertains. The best thing on broadcast television tonight is a blues concert
on the public broadcasting station.
But it wasn’t always that way. When I was a kid, there were
no championship games. There were the wire service polls, which usually agreed.
But there were times that there was strong disagreement over who was the real
champion. And the debate added to the interest in the game.
I loved Thanksgiving Day football. I would watch my high
school in the morning and the Texas-Texas A&M game in the afternoon. The
game didn’t matter nearly as much as the pageantry of the students and band. With
the money-driven sports of today, that ancient rivalry no longer exists. And
the Army-Navy game was not to be missed. I even attended a couple of college
football games at Princeton. The main purpose was fun and if the Tigers lost,
at least people had a good time.
But the biggest day of the year was New Year’s Day. There
were four bowl games. One would start the day watching the Tournament of Roses
Parade, then switch to either the Cotton or Sugar Bowl. The Cotton Bowl in
Dallas featured the Southwest Conference champ against an opponent from another
region. New Orleans Sugar Bowl was hosted by the SEC champ against another
regional champ. The Rose Bowl followed a few hours later and was always the Big
10 against the Pac 10 (both conferences now have more than ten members. And the
Orange Bowl at night was the greatest spectacle. I’ll never forget Joe Namath’s
1965 Alabama team coming from behind against Texas to just missing taking a
late lead on a quarterback sneak.
But that is in the past. Then, freshmen couldn’t play
varsity sports. Now, some football players are “one-and-done” and play a
freshman year before declaring for the NFL.
It’s just
different these days. And I guess that’s OK. There’s big money in college
football and as conferences fall apart and come together, and rivalries are
lost, I just can’t help but think that the real winners are the television
industry and the losers are the colleges, and geezers like myself who have lost
interest in the college game.
