January 1st used to the day for college football bowls. It was one of my favorite days every year growing up. All day long I sat glued in front of a television screen (either at my homem or my aun'ts) to watch fantastic football. It all started around noon (EST) and would go until late in the night.
But now it's pathetic. With the dates being moved around yearly, I can't remember what games are played when--it's just awful.
I'm talking about the tradition of New Year's Day, once the greatest holiday of any college football fan, the Christmas of the alumnus. For most of the 20th century and the vast majority of my life, New Year's Day meant a parade of bowl games. They came like beautiful bowl floats: the Cotton, the Sugar, the Rose, the Fiesta and finally the Orange, overlapping only slightly for 14 hours of football that marked the end of the season by determining the national champion.
Knock the archaic system but don't knock the drama. Saturday morning, I opened my TV schedule and saw six games. One was named for a Texas ticket broker, another for a bank and one more for a suburban restaurant chain with schlocky commercials.
Given all of that, I've converted to a playoff system. Play all the crappy but sometimes interesting bowl games in mid/late December. Jan 1st play the big four: Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar. Like Herb Gould, let's get rid of the automatic births to major conferences and just have the top eight teams play in those bowls on Jan 1, have the semis the week after (Jan 8), and the finals Jan 15. If you think that sounds very late, the current championship is Jan 9. It would be transcending and including the current bowl system (yes I just worked integral theory in on the US college bowl system).
Obviously the key piece there is getting rid of the stupid automatic births and there is a lotta money in those games. Until then, bleh.
