I question how much change I accept in the sports world. This is not about the athletes, who are far superior to those of 50 years ago. The stadiums and the playing fields and the equipment they play with--all far better than in the past. But that is not the problem I have.
My dilemma goes to the traditions of New Year's Day and how they don't resemble what I saw in 1968. Has this change been good for sports? Or am I just an out-of-touch old man who thinks things were better back then than they are now?
I didn't do much on New Year's Eve in 1967. I was with my girlfriend until 12:01 on January 1, when my father expected me to be home by 12:30. Considering that I did not have a driver's license and I was nearly a mile away from home, I thoroughly enjoyed the invigorating run up the hills rising away from the Raritan River in Highland Park, New Jersey. And, for the record, I made it home with 2 minutes to spare.
My New Year's Day consisted of not too much riveting excitement. But the sporting events of New Year's Day 1968 were important to me. They followed the 79th annual Tournament of Roses Parade from chilly Pasadena, where it might have been a cloudless sky, but at 7:00 in the morning P.S.T., it was downright cold. I like seeing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on their horses, parading down Colorado Boulevard as much as the awesome floats (I think they were as our family did not yet own a color TV) or the loud, high stepping bands from the University of Southern California--the Spirit of Troy and Indiana University Marching Hundred. Also telecast was the Mummer's Parade, a bunch of crazily festooned marchers, strumming their stringed instruments, along with a bevy of clowns adding to the Philadelphia madness. See the picture below, from the Temple University photo archives, of the Liberty Clowns, as shot by Jack Tinney of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
The Orange Bowl Classic held the King Orange Jamboree Parade down Biscayne Boulevard in Miami the night before the game and they even had a basketball tournament. That was second rate to the aforementioned spectacles.
It is what followed the parades which was my main focus. The four bowl games that were always held on New Year's Day. Orange, in the Orange Bowl in Miami; Sugar, in Tulane Stadium in New Orleans; Cotton, in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; and the "Granddaddy of them all," the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Only the best teams went to these games. And invariably, a mythical National Champion (or sometimes two) emerged from the day's play, based upon the votes cast in the Associated Press and United Press International polls. Many times, a Heisman Trophy winner, symbolic of the best collegiate football player in America, participated in one of the four games.
Back in 1968, there were other bowl games--the Gator, in Jacksonville, FL; the Sun, in El Paso, TX; the Bluebonnet Bowl, in Houston; and the Liberty Bowl, which had relocated from Philadelphia to Memphis, TN. They did not have the stature of the New Year's Day games--merely because they weren't played on New Year' Day.
The New Year's Day games were nearly all day games in 1968. The major television networks, while covering the contests, had started to make demands to move the games to a more suitable hour for a national audience, which began with the Orange Bowl going to prime time night game in 1964 when Texas and Alabama, with Joe Namath vied for the trophy.
The culmination of the college football season was New Year's Day, absent post-season all-star games. Fans, many of them in various of states of disrepair from revelry on New Year's Eve, could watch these games bleary eyed in the stands or at home on TV. It was an annual ritual. A smorgasbord of college sports, bands, cheerleaders on display in warm, serendipitous settings. Certainly a sharp contrast to the cold, sometimes snow-covered turf of the Northeast. It seemed like it was a non-stop party, an extravaganza that could only be held on New Year's Day, advertising the four destinations for 8 schools whose record was deserving of playing in an elite contest.
The day always opened with the Cotton Bowl on CBS. 75,000 hooting and hollering fans entered the stadium on the Texas State Fairgrounds to watch Texas A&M defeat Alabama 20-16. Football was religion, especially in the South and Southwest, so the game always featured an invocation by a man of the cloth prior to the teams trying to beat each others brains in. I always got a kick out of the Tyler Junior College Apache Belles marching group of smiling women in cowgirl gear and boots, who normally performed during the halftime show. It is unclear whether they were at the 1967 Cotton Bowl, but they did make Lady Byrd Johnson an honorary Apache Belle in 1967.
Conflicting with and competing for a TV audience was the Sugar Bowl. Nearly 70,000 fans found a way to get off of Bourbon Street to cheer their home standing Louisiana State University Tigers over the #5 ranked and only unbeaten major school, the Wyoming Cowboys. The score was 20-13, but proud UW alums noted that there were as many Cowboys fans in New Orleans as there were LSU fans--probably an apocryphal statement of pride from the UW faithful--LSU dominated the Louisiana football scene.
What a colorful picture the marquee match up Rose Bowl spectacle must have given us (remember, no color TV in the Sperber den). NBC showed us the beautiful cheerleaders in their sweaters, representing USC. Tommy Trojan, on horseback, patrolling the sidelines; a tough, venerable mascot symbolizing a warrior mentality on the gridiron. USC, the champions of the Pacific 8 Conference, moving up the road from Los Angeles to nearby Pasadena, to play the upstart Indiana Hoosiers, the Big Ten representatives. O.J. Simpson, the U.S.C. tailback, led the #1 ranked Trojans over the determined #4 ranked Hoosiers, before 102,000 in the stadium and countless millions who watched the telecast anchored by the legendary Curt Gowdy and his partner, Al De Rogatis. Simpson, who would have later fame in the NFL, in movies and on TV before notoriety enveloped him, was the M.V.P.
The Orange Bowl, which followed the lengthy Rose Bowl, had the halftime spectaculars that stopped people in their seats rather than head to the concession stands or the rest rooms. Bands, pageantry, entertainment, dancing--the precursor to the incredible Super Bowl halftimes. For the record, in a tightly contested affair, the Oklahoma Sooners from the Big 8 Conference eked out a 26-24 win over the Tennessee Vols of the South Eastern Conference that night.
So, the Big 8 won two games while the SEC went 1-2. Such was the state of the southern tier bowls--they preferred the teams from the SEC or the Big 8--in fact, the Orange Bowl, by contract, had to take the Big 8 champ.
Which leads us to this New Year's Day. The Rose Bowl is still intact on the first of January. It just won't feature the Pac 12 and the Big 10. Instead, it is in the rotation of games leading up to the National Championship game, thereby providing the audience with the Georgia Bulldogs taking on Oklahoma. The other National Semi Final, at the Sugar Bowl in the Mercedes Benz Superdome, pits Alabama meeting the defending National Champions, the Clemson Tigers, in a rematch of last year's exciting finale.
I could not wrap my head around the Goodyear Cotton Bowl (naming rights are so valuable) being played on December 29th--3 days from its traditional perch, among such noteworthy games as the Belk Bowl, Sun Bowl, Music City Bowl and the ever-popular Arizona Bowl in Tuscon, with 5-6 New Mexico State having played 6-6 Utah State.
The Capital One Orange Bowl was on December 30th. 12-1 Wisconsin played 10-2 Miami. Two top football teams. This game is lumped in with the Taxslayer Bowl, the successor to the Gator Bowl, the Liberty Bowl and Glendale, Arizona's Fiesta Bowl, which has risen in status to become one of the bowls in the rotation for the National Semifinals.
Instead, on New Year's Day, the Outback Bowl, named after a steakhouse chain, puts Michigan against South Carolina; the Peach Bowl, in Atlanta, has undefeated Central Florida trying to cap a perfect season versus Auburn; and the Citrus Bowl, with Notre Dame taking on LSU in Orlando. All three games start between Noon and 1:00, acting as preludes to the Rose Bowl in its normal evening slot and the Sugar Bowl nightcap.
No games are scheduled for December 31st. That day belongs to the National Football League to finish its regular season. None are on at night, which really stinks, since I won't even have comedienne Kathy Griffin to watch, insanely railing at Anderson Cooper on CNN.
There just are too many bowl games (40--30 of them are prior to the Cotton Bowl) with too much TV money. Mediocre teams or at least average teams get to compete in another contest and a share of the pot for themselves or for their respective conferences.
In setting up a four team National Championship, tradition went by the wayside. There is enough controversy over how the four participants are selected. Unless the Finals, this year to be held at the sparking new Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta on January 8th, has the two SEC schools (Alabama, Georgia) facing off, Ohio State, winners of the Big Ten title and victorious over USC in the Cotton Bowl, will be squawking as to why weren't they selected instead of one of the 2 semifinals losers.
I have hated to see the diminution of the New Year's Bowl games. Prior to the start of the National Championships, there were usually 6 games on the slate--the Fiesta and Outback Bowls joined the Cotton, Fiesta, Rose and Orange Bowls. Still way too many games for one day.
With the clamor for a true National Champion to be determined on the field, change was inevitable. From December 16th through New Year's Day, 49 contests involving 98 "deserving" teams, will have been played. This year I may have watched parts of 10 of those affairs, important to the networks and sponsors, but fairly meaningless overall.
What will I be doing on New Year's Day? Probably watching portions of the three afternoon bowl games along with the now annual NHL Winter Classic from baseball's Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, where a rink was constructed so that the New York Rangers can host the Buffalo Sabers.
And yes, I will be watching the National Semifinals. They still involve two of the four 1967 New Year's Day bowl games. At least I can cling to some semblance of tradition when I watch the Rose and Sugar Bowls. Then again, the four aforementioned New Year's Day games loom on Monday, and I hope they are truly exciting.
What more could this New Year's Day football junkie want anyway in this new era of college football? I don't think I will get the Mummers Parade on TV anyway...
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