ESPN has killed January 1st

January 1st used to be something HUGE and special to college football. Now though the teams are a little better, it’s just another December 27th, and that’s thanks to the Mothership.


Waking up on New Year’s used to be about watching the Rose Parade, eating a nice late breakfast, waiting for the ham and bean soup to be ready during the Rose Bowl, and also stacking four tvs on one another to make sure you didn’t miss all the action of every bowl. It was like an NFL Sunday for college fans. And when you woke up January 2nd you had a national champion and didn’t have to wait a week or 10 days later.

That feeling and excitement has now been killed by ESPN. Their greed to have control over every bowl game (but 2) and build in programming has diminished and a great college football tradition.

Back in the day (No I’m not that old) the lineup would be Fiesta, Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Orange all on the same day. Then add in the Gator, Outback and Capital One. Usually all the games had really good teams in them too so its not like you had a bad game. Sure there are some blowouts, it happens, but THAT was a great time. Flipping back and forth if you only had one tv or watching all of them with buddies. Heck it was March Madness for college fans.

Hell now its all on one or 2 channels, and not even broadcast channels or the same day. You get Rose at its traditional late start then another top tier game after it. Before the Outback and Cap1 and Gator all spread out on different Disney owned stations. I know they want all eyes on every game to maximize ratings and get a better ad buy rate, but how many people want to watch a Big East team? Or MAC team? FSU-NIU was close till the late 3rd quarter and then how many drifted off. Wouldn’t it have been nice to flip over to a different primetime game?

And then these games that are on the 3rd or 4th, how many people get those days off regularly to go to the games. January 1st is a norm. Add in the winter holidays and its great. The Orange Bowl even has said that the later games get played away from January 1st affects the actual attendance. So don’t move further away from the 1st, go back to it.

ESPN/ABC and Disney, along with Fox, have the ability to bring this great. FOX needs to be a player (and I think they will be) and get some more big time bowls and college football. They could compete with ESPN and battle back and forth. ESPN has 3 outlets that it can showcase games on. Who wouldn’t like to wake up and have this staring at them in the face?

You can fill in the Heart of Dallas or GoDaddy bowl there too. But that day would be great. Not everyone watches every NFL game. Not everyone watches every college bowl game. This would be a great day! I don’t care if you want to play the Championship Game on the 2nd, fine, but give us back January 1st!