The bowls

I am close to a surfeit of college football but will have room for the final game on the 7th. Once an obsessive fan, I now, like church on Easter Sunday,  visit it at the New Year.  My what changes! since Curt Gowdy describing Daryl Royal and Billy Vessels' exploits! What a gift when TV made it possible to actually see the games. The luscious Bowls named Rose, Orange, Sugar and Cotton came alive on New Year's Day. One knew where and when to find them.

The Rose Bowl is the only that endures with its traditional name and slot. The Rose Parade and the Bowl game that followed were beautiful.  I am grateful this one fragment has not retreated into the mist of the past.

The games I had to discover mostly by channel surfing as their names and even where they play are now mostly business brands. In this corporation called the U.S. I suppose it is to be expected but perhaps I can be forgiven a tear of nostalgia for school and community spirit that gave us something to identify with and participate in. 

So many of the games seemed to feature Avatars technically retouched.

But the Alamo and the Liberty Bowls avoided some of the retouching and permitted the audience some real time experiencing.

I was reminded that these after all are college kids as I watched the ECU coach and his efforts to relax and give confidence to his  benighted kicker. He sadly failed, over and over. I shed tears on the final failure.

These are just near-men pushing themselves to succeed, whether for themselves or someone else. Young men are especially prone to sacrificing for others. It takes a lot of betrayal for greed to transform them.

The actors in the Alamo Bowl had all the elements of  human frailty, a boorish coach banned from Texas Tech just before this final game and on the Michigan State side brawling athletes suspended from play.  The game was magnificent.  I was in awe of the brilliance of the offense and defense of Texas Tech. Truly an aesthetic experience. One has to wonder at the creative capacity of this boorish, sexist coach whose style in interpersonal relations  is to bully. What a combination.

The Michigan State team was out manned but the many freshmen held their own to the very end. Throughout the game I was thinking how opponents in the next two years must beware of these courageous already skilled young men now tempered in the heat of the New Year's competition.