The granddaddy of them all — Shawn Kemp in 2045.
And, also, the Rose Bowl, the first-ever bowl, played New Year’s Day on a picturesque Pasadena afternoon, a hung-over sports fan’s equivalent to a stoner watching a Seth Rogen film.
Indeed, Thursday, there were more bowls than in a CU dorm, but once everything settled down and the Rose Bowl began, man, how cool was this?
The traditionally messy sport of college football, exemplified by the suffocating smorgasbord of bowl games in December, now has a simplified playoff system. That’s not just a bowl game on TV — it’s a playoff game! Playoffs! Playoffs!
Bowl season is a rough ride. Six-win teams playing in an empty stadium on a Tuesday night on national television? But then, for every dud like one of those, there’s in the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl, in which Central Michigan combined the Kordell Stewart Hail Mary and the Cal-Stanford band-is-on-the-field play. Incidentally, there aren’t any Popeyes in the Bahamas, they reported, but that fact, too, sums up the ridiculousness of bowl games and names, as well as the reality that the business of college football is business.
The three-game playoffs, though, are just awesome because they’re simple and easy to follow. And because they’re marquee matchups that shoo aside questions of who earned what. The college football playoffs are a neat, sweet Craftsman home in Wash Park — and the rest of the college football bowl games are the spray-painted graffiti on that home’s front door.
But we watch it all because it’s on. OK — you watch it all because it’s on; I did my best to avoid the Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl and the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl, but the point is that Americans love football and football is hypnotic and thus you could air the 1987 Poinsettia Bowl and it would get more viewers than a first-round game of the NHL playoffs.
There’s so much to love about college football, and there’s so much to hate about college football. And we accept it all and conveniently compartmentalize any negatives, such as an unbalanced, unfair system or the occasional criminal being lauded as a hero, because did you see that play?
I’ll admit, it’s all just fun, this colorful world of college football. These bright uniforms in colors you didn’t know existed, or helmets that look like a disco ball. And we equally adore the traditionally simple uniforms and styles, be it the numbers on the Alabama helmets or the Notre Dame gold dome. We bask ourselves in the traditions of the schools — there’s really nothing like it in sports, be it the bands and bulldogs and ghosts and groves and tailgates and trash talk. And the names! Weston Steelhammer (Air Force), Cassanova McKinzy (Auburn), Lion King Conway (Eastern Michigan) and Scooby Wright III (Arizona) are members of my all-name team.
Bowl season gives you the rare opportunity for your Pac-12 college to play your buddy’s SEC college. Bowl season inspires you to Google the names of sideline reporters and companies you didn’t know were companies. Bowl season (and this will sound cheesy) gives college athletes a rare experience. Yes, the idea of being a “bowl team” is diluted because there are 39 bowl games. But you know what, most of these kids work unfathomably hard at being a college football player, so it’s cool that they get rewarded with a trip to a new city and all the pomp and circumstance and gift bags that come with being in a bowl game.
Bowl season is imperfect, but so is college football, and you’ll watch anyway, right? If anything, you’ll watch the playoffs, because it feels like they created them just for you.
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
