I grew up and experienced my formative years as a college football fan in central Ohio during the 1970s.
The legendary Woody Hayes was prowling the Ohio State sideline and he had the greatest back in school history at his disposal, two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin. It was magical.
My dad was a barber at an eight-chair shop at the time, and he was in charge of tracking the New Year’s Day football pool.
It included 100 names on a big cardboard square with numbers across the top and down the left side. Even an elementary sprite like me could figure it out.
At the end of each quarter, the last scoring number for each of the two teams intersected on the board. The individual at that square pocketed $250.
In the 1970s, that was a significant chunk of change, and it was exciting to imagine who was the big winner as we watched the games unfold.
On New Year’s Day (or night) from 1973 through 1977, the Buckeyes were in action each time. Griffin led them to four straight Rose Bowls (1973 through 1976), then came a trip to the Orange Bowl.
Ohio State had mixed results, they played a national championship foe in two of those games, and the defending national titlist in still another.
The Buckeyes went 2-3 against that gauntlet, but it was thrilling, exciting stuff. The Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl were the Big Four of that era, and just getting invited to one of them generally meant you were a Top 10 team.
Alas, times have changed. The bowls have been relegated to secondary status behind the four-team College Football Playoffs.
This year, for example, Ohio State was No. 1 until yet another loss to Michigan, which blew them completely out of the playoff picture.
Instead, Ryan Day’s squad yakked up Friday night’s Cotton Bowl 14-3 against Missouri. Ugh!
It doesn’t feel right. Oh, I’ll be watching. But with players opting out, or in the transfer portal, it tilts toward a junior varsity game rather than a bowl atmosphere.
It will probably get worse next year, when the playoffs expand to 12 teams, and the schedule becomes even more muddled.
Perhaps nostalgia is my enemy, too. New Year’s Day was filled with snacks and soda, banter and bluster, highlights and frustrations and a day full of intrigue and monitoring other scores and how they might affect the polls.
I reveled in watching Griffin and the Buckeyes smash defending national champion USC 42-21 in the 1974 Rose Bowl.
It was heartbreaking when the Trojans nipped Ohio State 18-17 in the 1975 Rose Bowl in a de facto national championship game decided on a haphazard two-point conversion pass that USC somehow completed in the final three minutes.
The 1976 Rose Bowl was devastating. The Buckeyes dropped a 23-10 decision to UCLA that cost them yet another national crown in Griffin’s final game. Worse, they had mauled the those same Bruins 41-20 earlier that year in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Woody regained his mojo in the 1977 Orange Bowl, hammering Big 8 champion Colorado 27-10 in Miami.
Yet another one-point loss cost Ohio State still another national title in the 1980 Rose Bowl, when USC tripped Earle Bruce’s first team 17-16.
New Year’s Day was special again in 1987, when Chris Spielman was the defensive MVP of a 28-12 beating of Texas A&M at the Cotton Bowl.
There wasn’t another important New Year’s Day Bowl game played for 10 years as far as OSU fans were concerned.
I attended my first Rose Bowl in 1997, when the Buckeyes won a 20-17 thriller over undefeated and 2nd-ranked Arizona State. Amazingly, that was OSU’s first Rose Bowl win since the 1974 game.
Terrelle Pryor led Ohio State to a 26-17 victory over favored Oregon in the 2010 Rose Bowl, another grand new year.
Urban Meyer took down No. 1-ranked Alabama, coached by Nick Saban, 42-35 on New Year’s Day in the 2015 Sugar Bowl. That was a college football playoff semifinal, and probably the most exciting of New Year’s games for me.
(Note, I was too young to remember the 27-16 1969 Rose Bowl win over O.J. Simpson for a national crown. I was at the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, and the stunning 31-24 double-overtime Fiesta Bowl win over Miami, but that was on Jan. 3.)
After beating the Crimson Tide, the Buckeyes won their most recent national championship by throttling Oregon in the first playoff final 42-20, again that game was played on Jan. 12.
We took the whole family to Meyer’s last game as a head coach in the 2019 Rose Bowl, a 28-23 win over Washington on New Year’s Day.
Last year, the Buckeyes lost to Georgia 42-41 in the Peach Bowl, a college football playoff semifinal on New Year’s Eve. Yikes!
So here we are. It’s the dawn of a new age in college football, for better or worse.
New Year’s Day just won’t seem the same for me this year.