A long-ago colleague of mine – a veteran tippler – approached New Year’s Eve with a healthy contempt. “Amateur night,” he called it.
The compulsion to mark the beginning of another year by wearing a paper hat, blowing into cheap noisemakers, drinking the town dry and kissing everyone in sight at midnight is a little bizarre. Yet, it seems popular with the kids.
Personally, I’ll have no trouble staying in, watching the student athletes from Clemson, Oklahoma, Michigan State and Alabama taunting each other on a football field while missing the big party outside. You can have amateur night.
Give me an event where a ball-drop is a bad thing.
And who wouldn’t want to spend their New Year’s Eve with Nick Saban, that party hound?
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Sure, it’s idiotic to be playing these championship semifinals on New Year’s Eve rather than on New Year’s Day. Is it really necessary to reserve that spot on the calendar for the Rose Bowl, when there are such bigger fish to be fileted in this new age of college football?
They made this much harder than it needed to be. Although, for me, it’s no problem. I’m boring.
But there are those faced with a huge conundrum here.
Do you stay with the usual routine of hijincks and then consider it a great start to 2016 if you can find your car in the morning?
Or do you stay in the safety of the living room, watching the only two games that are must-watch for anyone who has followed the arc of this college season?
Don’t you know that the college football establishment has created a few new cracks in some marriages, with couples arguing between over-paying grotesquely for a night out or watching television (again). I don’t really understand the reason for playing these games when they are, but, honestly, I’m kind of grateful for the excuse to hunker down on the couch.
Those in need of a note excusing you from amateur night, and can’t get one from your doctor, feel free to use this in its place.
And an early Happy New Year.
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