Project Couch Potato

I spent this past New Year's Day driving back to Williamsburg after a fun yet personally dissatisfying New Year's Eve in Washington, D.C. - that's another story for another time. When I finally arrived home and turned on the TV to watch Hawaii attempt to challenge Georgia in the Sugar Bowl - in case you missed it they did not - I felt that throughout the day I had somehow betrayed my roots as a sports fan. My childhood New Year's Days were broken into stints of time spent on our living room sofa, in our backyard, and at our kitchen table. New Year's Day was about one thing and one thing only: college football.

While Division I college football bowl games are now spread out over about a month of time, in my younger days I recall as many bowl games as possible being packed into one glorious day - New Year's Day. It all started off around noon with the likes of the Peach and Gator Bowls. It continued into the afternoon with the Rose and Cotton Bowls, and culminated with the night games, the Orange, Sugar and Fiesta Bowls. I'd watch them all turning the channels back and forth until finally settling on whichever game was most exciting. I'd venture outside during the halftime breaks for an impromptu game of football with whomever else from the neighborhood had the same thought. I'd break during the 4th quarter of the Rose Bowl for the traditional New Year's Day pork and sauerkraut dinner - it's a Pennsylvania thing - but I would of course leave the TV on loud enough to hear just in case there was a sudden reason to run back to the living room. And finally, I would stay up late, way past my bedtime, to watch the best teams battle each other in the biggest games - usually Notre Dame and usually the Orange Bowl.

As I grew older and began to understand the national championship implications of all the games they became even more exciting. New Year's Day annually became a great debate over which school would be #1. Each team took its turn making or breaking its case. There were favorites to win the prize obviously, but I could always count on something unexpected and nearly unbelievable happening. Watching Rocket Ismail return a late 4th quarter punt 91 yards down the right sideline for a touchdown surging Notre Dame towards an Orange Bowl victory over Colorado on Jan. 1, 1991 was one of the most exhilarating moments of my youth. Watching the touchdown be negated because of a clipping penalty on the Irish was one of the most disappointing.

I can appreciate the efforts of the BCS system to match the two best teams together and declare a "true" national champion. I can appreciate the arguments made for Division I college football to institute a playoff system out of frustration with the BCS. But what I cannot appreciate is the manner in which college football players are treated like dollar signs. College football players, like all student athletes, work hard and sacrifice an enormous amount of time to represent their schools. New Year's Day, in addition to being more exciting than it now is, used to be an appropriate celebration of the student athlete, a day on which each player from each team competing for one singular purpose irregardless of what was at stake: pride. I used to be able to flip through the channels from game to game watching and rooting for one team after the another. Now, I flip through the channels from game to Law & Order marathon to Project Runway marathon a bit less enthralled than in the past.

I admit that when all the bowl games had been played there was seemingly never unanimous agreement over which team should be declared national champions. But what's so horrible about that? It's rare in this world to encounter anything important that's decided with absolute certainty, and I would consider college football's national championship to be fairly important. In most instances. cases are presented, opinions are voiced, and resolutions are made based upon all the information that's been put forth. That's how families decide what they're having for dinner, that's how groups of friends decide which movie to go see, that's how the NCAA determines which teams compete in its national championship tournament, and that's how laws are made and how nations elect heads of state. And just in case you didn't already know, that's how we make decisions on college applicants.