I am slowly trying to warm up to the concept of bowl season.
Every foundational fiber of my shambling mess of a college football-loving body is telling me that I should be Extremely Excited about a late-December game against anybody, anytime, anywhere, but my brain disagrees. It will take some last-minute convincing for my cerebellum to release the necessary endorphins required to make my body sweat with anticipation (instead of sweating because I'm gross) for a bowl game played in Memphis or Terre Haute or wherever.
Which is mostly a result of Ohio State football kicking a consistently large amount of ass over the past few decades, to the point that there have been really only two less-than-consequential bowl appearances in the past 20 years where a "just okay" Buckeye team was rewarded with a "just okay" postseason trip to San Antonio or Jacksonville. Everything else struggles to pique my interest these days, but to paraphrase an alcoholic robot, with my mighty powers I can get sick of things much quicker than you humans.
And maybe you feel the same way, inundated by a glut of lesser bowls that I'm still half-certain are just fronts for laundering the money for some Russian oligarch sitting on a yacht in the Caymans. We're lucky as Buckeye fans that even in a year when a Rose Bowl might seem disappointing, every game that the team plays still feels significant in some way instead of having the same national relevance as a discarded Taco Bell napkin under the passenger seat of your car (that's right, there are way too many bowls, I said it and I'd say it again if I had to).
What's interesting is that at exactly one point in their history, Ohio State did indeed play postseason bowl football in the B.C. (Before Christmas) wasteland, taking on BYU in the 1982 Holiday Bowl. The Buckeyes were 8-3 and ranked 17th in the country, and while BYU was unranked they did have a guy named Steve Young throwing the ball for them. The Cougars and the Buckeyes met up on December 17th in San Diego, and while I could spend the next hundred words or so breaking down this oddity, I'll just link a YouTube video (from a very cool and good guy you might have heard of) instead!
The 1982 Holiday Bowl was the second of 16 bowl games that year, and Ohio State cruised to an easy 47-17 victory. The Earle Bruce era was replete with wins in bowl games that you kind of just shrugged at, and that's part of why he ended up getting canned. Ohio State understands that it has established its college football blue blood bonafides over the past several decades, and has no intention of losing that position through disingenuous spam emails trying to get Buckeye fans excited enough about whatever the hell Gasparilla is supposed to be to buy ticket packages to God knows where.
Today, of course, the Big Ten bowl tie-ins make it virtually impossible for an Ohio State team to play so early in December. The worst that the Buckeyes could aspire to is something like the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, but hell, that's still in Phoenix and takes place after Christmas has been fully digested. However south a season might go for Ohio State, it's still got the member's only jacket of a Power 5 institution, and with that comes the privilege of not having to associate with the assorted rabble playing in Idaho.
Which, in the spirit of the holidays, puts the Rose Bowl tilt against Utah in perspective for yours truly. Yes, I'm disappointed that the Buckeyes aren't in the playoff and yes, I'm full of bitter rage that Michigan has a legitimate shot at winning a national championship.
But the truth is that it could be a lot, lot worse. Being in the conversation, watching a top ten team, having national title hopes... that's all pretty fantastic. Appreciating what we have and carrying a begrudging hope that the new year might somehow be just a little bit better is what the holidays are all about, and that extends to Ohio State fandom as well.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
