Football, football and more football

Reflections on a long weekend of football:

 

          I knew he enjoyed attending baseball games and horse races, but I had no idea that Chicago’s best-known historic figure was still involved with financial institutions. I guess he still is because I spent four enjoyable hours watching the Capital One Bowl between Georgia and Nebraska.

          Every time ABC showed the score on the screen, the thing was tagged the CAPONE Bowl.

          Ratta tat tat.

 

          It was no surprise when seven NFL head coaches lost their jobs after the final week of the season. But it was a little odd to see Rex Ryan hold on to his job with the Jets.

 

          Although the BCS National Championship game has rendered other college bowl games nearly pointless, the Rose Bowl remains an exciting game every year. The beautiful stadium, with its natural grass field, the California surroundings and the usually close matchups always make for great viewing.

 

          Speaking of the Tournament of Roses, we watched the parade this morning and were happy to discover that our cable provider had the CW Network’s coverage, announced by Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks.

          Edwards and Eubanks remain the best announcing team for the parade and it was a taste of home to hear their voices again.

 

          South Carolina’s victory over Michigan was a thriller, but it is hoped here that someone will explain television to whoever designs Michigan’s uniforms.

          In the bowl game, Michigan wore white shirts with yellow numbers. Although the numbers were outlined in dark blue, the numbers were not readable for television viewers. If fact, the shirts looked to be blank.

          Michigan has one of the best-established programs in all of college football but someone made a dumb mistake with those uniforms.

 

          On each team’s first possession in the Rose Bowl, both Stanford and Wisconsin ran reverse pass plays with the flanker throwing the ball. That’s pretty wide open stuff!

          Decades ago the Big 10 champion came out west each year to play in the Rose Bowl and played a very conservative offense against the Pacific 8 champion’s typically more wide open offense. The difference between the two approaches was always a big part of the game.

          The differences tend to be program to program rather than region to region now. And both Stanford and Wisconsin played somewhat conservatively over the majority of the game. But it was an exciting game, close and hard-hitting.

 

          The announced attendance for the Rose Bowl today was a little more than 93,000. According to Wikipedia, the largest crowd for a Rose Bowl game was for the January 1, 1973 contest between USC and Ohio State, when 106,869 showed up to watch. The largest crowd at the Rose Bowl stadium for a Super Bowl was 103,985 when the Steelers beat the Rams on January 20, 1980.

          I attended both those games.