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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The Rose Bowl thriller had everything good about college football -- and everything bad -- in one broadcast.
Jan 3, 2005 | Seen any football lately?
The best game I saw over the holidays was the Rose Bowl, a thriller in which Texas beat Michigan 38-37 on a field goal as time ran out. Texas quarterback Vince Young was dazzling, running for 192 yards and four touchdowns and adding 180 yards and a TD passing.
But he was only the best player in a game that featured a bunch of terrific performances, offensive fireworks, the lead changing hands and a huge crowd going nuts from start to finish. It was the best game I've seen in years, even though it was decided on a placekick. It was everything college football is supposed to be and sometimes is.
I also really enjoyed that Iowa-LSU game in the Whatever Sponsor Bowl from lovely There's a Palm Tree in the Logo So This Must Be Fla. I don't have anything to say about it other than: Wow! What a finish! But I just wanted to mention it.
I was prepared to hate the Rose Bowl for a couple of reasons. First, I'd been bitter about my alma mater, California, getting screwed out of the Rose Bowl bid by the ridiculous political machinations of the Bowl Championship Series voting. I'd earned that bitterness, by the way, by having been on record as calling those machinations ridiculous long before the Golden Bears were good enough to even dream about the BCS, and I would have continued to think of them as ridiculous if they had sent Cal to Pasadena.
But it was a little hard to keep my dander up after Cal got annihilated in the Holiday Bowl by Texas Tech on Thursday.
Then ABC got me back in a grumbling mood during the Rose Bowl pregame show by airing an interview between announcer Keith Jackson and two legendary former coaches of the teams involved, Bo Schembechler of Michigan and Darrell Royal of Texas. Schembechler coached the Wolverines from 1969 to 1989; Royal coached the Longhorns from 1957 to 1976.
Jackson asked, "How come you guys never played each other?"
Schembechler said, "Jeez, I don't know, I ..." and both men laughed heartily. "Let's put it this way," he continued, "I had enough problems. I'm not going down there to hunt up Darrell."
"Keith," Royal said, "toughs don't look up toughs. You know, if you're going to get in a scrap, don't get in a scrap with a tough guy."
Michigan and Texas are two of the towering powers in college football history, and before Saturday they had never played each other. Michigan started playing football in 1879, Texas in 1893. Never met. Of course conference affiliations had kept them from a bowl matchup for most of the last half century or so, but with three or four non-conference games a year, adding up to hundreds of opportunities, they'd never gotten around to scheduling each other.
Why go play Michigan when you can beat up on North Texas 65-0?
