In The Beginning.....

In the beginning of the New Year, that is.....Well, the new year is indeed upon us. The holiday season seemed to come and go so fast this year. It hardly left any time to do much. The middle of December did bring new joy to our family, though. We welcomed another granddaughter on Dec. 13th and our first great grandchild....a boy...on Dec. 16th! Both are doing well, I am glad to say!! That will make the holidays in the years ahead even more special. Let's hope you all had the same type of excitement and joy in your life this season!
The one thing that this time of year brings....football!! And for those of you who love basketball, the season is just starting out and teams are beginning to show what is in store for later in the year when they have their playoffs. As for football, we are brought the end of both college and football seasons with bowl game after bowl game and the NFL playoffs. By the way, congratulations to the New England Patriots who finished their regular season undefeated, going 16-0 for the first time a team has done that in history. But who will remember how important and difficult it was if they do not complete their year undefeated and win the Super Bowl? Unfortunately, we sports fans tend to forget losers, and if the Pats do not win out for the rest of the season, their accomplishments will go down as just a foot note. Don't believe me? The last team to go undefeated in regular and post season play was the Miami Dolphins in 1972.......36 years ago. They posted an impressive 17-0 season and won the Super Bowl. The question is who did they beat in the Super Bowl?! Most of us don't remember or don't care because they lost.
Bowl Games. Are there too many? I think so. It used to be that you got up on New Year's day (if you could get up!) and watched a bit of the Rose Parade from Pasadena, then satisfied your need to watch a lot of football in one day by taking on the real important bowls: the Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl. Then you had a bit of reprieve before the big one came on that was traditionally the last major bowl and what was supposed to crown the national champion for the year, the Orange Bowl.
Now, they have bowl games lasting for over a week, and everyone and his brother/sister is sponsoring a bowl game. GMAC Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, Independence Bowl, etc, etc. Some stretch it out for far to get teams to fill the game that teams with a .500 record are eligible. I saw a game the other day where two teams with 7-6 and 6-5 records were playing. It was so bad......I think it was the Toilet Bowl. We need to get back to just the major bowls and make it mean something to have played well enough during the year to be invited to a bowl game.
Alas, for the football fan it will soon end. Today, Friday Jan. 4th, is the first day in the last week that there will be no bowl game played. After next week, college football fans will be without and they will go into withdrawal. I have heard it is even tougher to quit than smoking!

Special Note: Past blogs have centered mainly around sports. However, my New Year's resolution is to expand the scope of this blog into other areas and beginning next week I will be posting articles on different subjects, some of which will be posted to article directories as well. We will try to keep the subjects informative and entertaining and not quite so focused on sports. That is our aim, our resolution. But, then again, how many of you have kept your resolutions so far this year? How about last year? At least we are going to try.....