Happy New Year from The Moss Problem and welcome to our complete newyearsday college football bowl coverage. Six games today, and we’re at all of them, virtually. But first, there is TV coverage of the Rose Parade, in Pasadena, which I find a little stodgy (Portland, Oregon’s Rose Parade is much better because they have actual strippers on the floats). The Rose Parade unfortunately doesn’t translate to TV, because those floats could just as easily be made of plastic. You have to be able to be close enough to touch the roses, and smell them. But football translates very well on TV—in fact you could make an argument that TV was invented FOR football. The nice thing about the Rose Parade is that it’s a prelude to the most anticipated game of the day, The Rose Bowl, which this year is the most intriguing match up: Wisconsin and TCU. These other four games that happen first (and all, oddly, feature Big Ten teams) are little but featurettes for the Big One. But I’ll cover them, because I’m being paid to do so.
By some genius of scheduling, the first four games all START AT THE SAME TIME. What idiot made that decision? Well, I guess that’s why they have four TV networks and remote controls. To be fair, one is on an hour earlier than the others, so I’ll check in there. ABC AND NBC both have coverage of the Tournament of Roses Parade, Fox has infomercials, which isn’t surprising since Fox is worthless. But CBS has some show called Busytown Mysteries! Where’s the football? I guess no coverage of the TicketCity Bowl, named, I guess, because they can’t GIVE tickets away. I saw some halftime highlights and the stands looked empty. Too bad, because it’s turning out to be a pretty good came. Texas Tech is off to an early lead, but Northwestern is making a comeback.
Finally a game on TV! The Outback Bowl (short for Outback Steakhouse Bowl [Outback STIKE-House—their logo is a football shaped like a boomerang, for God’s sake!]) is a pleasant luv-fest (it’s Urban Meyer’s last game before become SUBURBAN Meyer, and Joe Paterno’s last game THIS SEASON. If you don’t totally LOVE Joe Paterno, get to therapy RIGHT NOW). Two perennial cool uniform favorites, Florida and Penn State, both wearing their best combinations: the Gators in all white with the Orange helmets, very classic, none of those hideous Nike high fashion experiments they’ve been known to pull out of some designer’s ass. The Nittany Lions with the black shirts, white pants, white helmet, black shoes (it’s sounding like that Ian Dury song), no words, no school name, no player names, no trim, except for the simple black stripe down the middle of the helmet. How glad we are were that they decided not to put the Nittany Lion on the side of the helmet (though the Nittany Lion mascot is great—he looks like a stuffed animal that escaped from a thrift store, drunk). So plain are those uniforms, the simple black numbers look garish. Maybe they should consider ROMAN NUMERALS (though everyone would want number ten). As unadorned as those uniforms are, that hideous Outback Steakhouse logo pasted on the front makes it look like they threw up their Kookaburra Wings on the front of their jerseys. My only complaint are these huge, white v-neck collars which just detract from the black shirts, and look to me, frankly, a little bit gay. They look like big ribbons, like they should be sporting giant gold medallions or something, or soap-on-a-rope. Not surprisingly, another Nike design.
I’m trying to find the Capital One Bowl, refreshing in that they don’t try to pretend that it’s not all about money. NBC has “The Capitals,” but it’s the Washington Capitals, a hockey team. HOCKEY?! There’s an “all sports” channel, 4.4 (lot more broadcast channels in the digital age!) but they’re showing the 2005 Ironman Triathlon! Yeah, I really wanted to see a repeat of THAT! Not surprisingly, considering their worthlessness, Fox is running more infomercials. But the shocking thing, CBS, who act like they INVENTED sports, are showing... INFOMERCIALS!
So, I guess the only way I have to check in on these other games is to READ about them, on the internet—how lame is that?! Final: Alabama 49, Michigan State 7. At the beginning of the season Alabama was ranked #1 and Michigan State were playing basketball, so what is surprising here is what happened to Alabama during the regular season? That’s about all I can say about this game, since I can’t actually SEE it. They might be wearing chicken suits and tutus for all I know.
The Gator Bowl—ehhh. Mississippi State ahead of Michigan 52 to 14 with six minutes left. The only thing not ugly about that is Michigan’s uniform, maybe the best in college football. Unless maybe they all went out to the Nike Store before the game and bought something hideous. They sure didn’t seem to pick up a DEFENSE during the month of December, that’s for sure.
That’s all for now! Next up: The Rose Bowl!
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