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Saturday, January 2. 2010
Happy New Year!
How can anyone root for a team called “The Ducks”? Oh well, don’t want to piss off the Oregon alumni … or them crazy fans of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.That’s a funny story line. Disney makes a movie (or two as I recall) about a guy coaching a peewee league hockey team called the Mighty Ducks. That’s actually the name of the movie, as I recall. No matter, I never saw it. Emelio Estevez stars as the unlucky guy coerced into coaching the worst peewee hockey team in the history of peewee hockey. Who knew peewee hockey had a history? Who knew there was peewee hockey?
So, Disney makes this movie, it becomes a big hit, so much so they make a sequel and — this is the great part — Disney creates a professional hockey team that gets into the National Hockey League! No shit! The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim!
The movie came out in 1992; the team became an NHL franchise in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup in 2007. In 2005 Disney sold the team to the Samueli Family, who changed the name of the team to the Anaheim Ducks.I don’t follow hockey. Looked it all up on Wikipedia. My nephew Chris, who lived in Colorado for many years, is a big hockey fan and could probably give us all the details of every team that has ever cut the ice in the NHL. Obviously, Chris is a big Avalanche fan.
So, this isn’t about NHL hockey, although great columns and blogs are written every day about the NHL and its teams and fans. It isn’t even about the Oregon Ducks playing The Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, which is still on as I type.
Up to and including most of the First Quarter, I thought Ohio State was going to win this one in a walk, but it doesn’t appear so now in the Fourth Quarter. The Ducks of Oregon have a great team with a really good quarterback, Jeremiah Masoli. Sadly, I have to leave before the game is over. I’d really like to see who wins the Rose Bowl.
You know what this is really about? Welcoming in the New Year: 2010. My thought has always been, “Ain’t it great to ring in the New Year with College Football all day and night!” Now, I’m going to miss the end of one of the best Rose Bowl games in some time.
Used to be, when I was young, we had some really great bowl games on New Years Day: The Rose Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Cotton Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, among the most notable. Of those, only the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl are played on New Years Day. Thanks in part to the insanity of the BCS — the Bowl Championship Series.Although that’s not why the Cotton Bowl Classic isn’t played on January 1st. The owners of that game just decided to play it on January 2nd, which, thankfully for them, is a Saturday this year. Could always count on an early morning game, a great early morning game, with the Cotton Bowl, now called the Cotton Bowl Classic. Officially, it’s called something else.
You see corporate sponsorship has changed the names of all but the Rose Bowl. It’s the “AT&T Cotton Bowl,” the “Tostitos Fiesta Bowl,” “FedEx Orange Bowl,” the “Allstate Sugar Bowl,” etc., etc., etc.
It’s almost funny listening to sportscasters and chatterers talking about these bowl games, stumbling to put the corporate sponsors’ names in whenever they mention the bowl game itself. Because these corporate sponsors are advertisers on just about every network that talks about sports, the rule, written or otherwise, keep the advertisers happy and use their names when talking about the bowl games.Ever watch pro sports on TV? On certain replays and at certain points in the game, an advertiser will sponsor the feature, and the people calling the game stumble with the name when introducing the clip. Can’t think of any in particular and I’m too lazy to do the research on the Internets, but that’s almost funny — when it isn’t too annoying.
The funniest thing I heard was blurted out by none other than Brent Musberger during the Rose Bowl.
Mr. Musberger has been making weird, funny and controversial statements ever since his days as a newspaper columnist in Chicago, when he called Tommie Smith and John Carlos “black-skinned storm troopers” after the two athletes raised their fists in a Black Power salute while on the podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Brent has been calling college football for ABC for two decades now, ever since being “dismissed by CBS when it was decided he was acquiring too much exposure and power at the former network. That’s the rumor anyway. He once got into a fistfight with Jimmy the Greek while at ABC … talk about two egos in conflict.Anyway, the funny thing Musberger said during the Rose Bowl. Now, bowl games are generally played by teams that are not local to the area, with the occasional exception of the Rose Bowl, which, historically, features a Big 10 team against a Pac 10 team. That includes UCLA and USC, both Los Angeles area teams.
So, the people who go to bowl games take about a week out of their holiday schedules and spend thousands of dollars getting to the game and enjoying all the sights of the area before the game is played. Going to a bowl game is a huge investment for most people, especially if they’re coming from as far away as Eugene, OR and Columbus, OH.
The Rose Bowl was a close game in terms of the score. So after half time, early in the Third Quarter, we were served a view from whatever blimp was covering the game and Musberger says, and this isn’t a totally accurate quote, “You know we have a good game when you look at the parking lot and no one is leaving!”
No shit, Sherlock! The score could have been a lop-sided 30-0, either way, and no one would be leaving the game! 99% of those fans in the stands spent thousands of dollars to be there and the last thing they want to do is leave before the game is over! Maybe in the last few minutes of the game, but right after the half? Geez Brent … OMG! LOL!New Years Day is all about college football — unless it falls on a Sunday, which is now given over to pro football, thanks to the 16-game season that’s actually 17 weeks long, thanks to every team getting a bye week during the regular season.
College football and food. My friends and I had bean soup at Dan’s house Friday Night, causing me to miss the end of the Rose Bowl. After the soup we played Wii bowling. I bowled right-handed. My left arm is still in a cast. New Years Day is about college football, food and friends and family!
But it’s really the college football I look forward to every January 1st. And the funny things we occasionally hear from the sports commentators during the games.
Happy New Year!
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