Throwback Day

 New Year's Day morning, and I don't care what the calendar says. It may be 2025 in the wider world, but in my kitchen right now it feels like 1970, 1971, 1972, any number of bygone years.

It feels like New Year's Day again, in other words.

I say this because, for the first time in years, today is not cluttered with a pile of inconsequential chain steakhouse, credit card or car rental bowls. No, sir. Today, New Year's Day is Throwback Day -- that delicious time when we sat down about noon and didn't get up until almost midnight, because January 1 was when they rolled out the big dogs.

You had your Cotton Bowl and your Sugar Bowl and your Rose Bowl, and then you had your Orange Bowl to finish up. Everyone involved was either in the mix for the national title or in the mix to throw a wrench in the proceedings. And you didn't find any stray posers hanging around, all those Harlequin States and Northwest Eastern Techs playing in either a minor fruit bowl or a used-car dealer bowl.

Today feels like that. And we've got the expanded College Football Playoff to thank.

Without it, Texas would not be squaring off against Arizona State in the Peach Bowl, and Oregon and Ohio State would not be meeting in a clash of titans in the Rose Bowl, and two more heavyweights, Notre Dame and Georgia, would not be slugging it out in the Sugar Bowl. Just as back in the day, it'll be a day-long narrative that will play out from one game to the next. It'll be, finally, New Year's Day again.

And, sure, it's not exactly the same as it used to be. At the end of the day, we won't have a national champion; we'll have the four semifinalists in the chase for it. Penn State's already in, having punched its ticket by rolling over Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl last night.

As for the rest ...

Well, I'm going with Texas over Arizona State in the Peach, but it'll be closer than a lot of people think. The Rose ... hell, that's a coin flip, but I'll say Oregon. Same with the Sugar, but I'll be provincial and pick the Fighting Irish in an all-out Arturo Gatti/Micky Ward style slugfest.

In any event ...

Enjoy the first day of 1971 (or '72, or '73). I will.