The Alexander City Outlook

Today is a day for football

Today is one of my favorite days of the year. That is New Year’s Day. It was always a family tradition to gather around the television set to watch numerous bowl games. These are always the best games to watch because its conference against conference.

Watching football on New Year’s Day is probably one of my favorite things for the entire year. It puts everything in perspective for me. Sports dominate Alabama, especially Alabama and Auburn football.

The day starts off watching the Cotton Bowl, which kicks off at 10 a.m. along with the Outback Bowl that features Auburn vs. Northwestern.

A little later on, the Gator Bowl kicks off and then the Capital One Bowl. That all happens before 1 p.m.

Then you have the traditional Rose Bowl game right in the middle of the afternoon, and then the Sugar bowl follows at night.

Not only will New Year’s Day be fun for watching football, but Jan. 2 will also be just as fun. Five bowl games are slated to be played that day including Birmingham’s PapaJohns.com bowl.

Then the final three BCS bowls including Alabama and Texas’ showdown in Pasadena for all the marbles will be held next week.

Although I do enjoy the extended marathon of bowl games, I think the old bowl system was much more exciting to watch on New Year’s Day.

Instead of having one bowl game at a time, you had three major bowls occurring at one time to end the day. On NBC, you had the Orange Bowl. CBS would cover the Fiesta Bowl. The SEC champion would then play on ABC in the Sugar Bowl.

What made it so fun was to flip back and forth between the games to keep up with what is going on in all three games. When one went to a commercial break, then you could flip over and see another game.

Better yet, I liked to flip between the channels between plays so I wouldn’t miss that game-changing performance.

This day was the reason why some TVs had the picture-in-picture function. That allowed you to watch two different games at once.

The reason why it was so fun to watch was that one, two or even all three games could affect the national championship. If the No. 1 team lost its game, then the No. 2 team just had to win to be the national champions. Then again, you could have both the top two teams lose their games and then the No. 3 team could come out on top.

Between the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar bowls, you would pretty much know who would win the national championship, but if there were several upsets, then you’d have to wait for the polls to know who won it all.

I still enjoy the bowl marathon especially because it is now one week longer. It starts earlier and ends later. Many of the games are bad, but there are always a few that make the bowl season all worth watching.

All of the bowls to this point were the appetizers. Now, it’s time for the main course.

Brent Maze is managing editor of The Alexander City Outlook. His column appears in each Friday edition.