Sports
January 1 Is Just Another College Football Day
The college bowl games are just steps to the championship game
When January 1st Meant the End of the College Football season
Once upon a time, January 1st marked the finish line of the college football season. The traditional bowl games played out, a champion was crowned, and players returned to campus to resume their roles as students. That version of the sport no longer exists.
Money changed everything. January 1st is no longer a conclusion. It is now a checkpoint. This year, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena serves as a College Football Playoff quarterfinal. Two more quarterfinal games follow at the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. What was once a ceremonial finale has become one of the most lucrative days on the college football calendar.
A Playoff That Pushes Deeper Into the Academic Year
The expansion does not stop on New Year’s Day. The College Football Playoff continues with semifinal games in Glendale, Arizona, and Atlanta. The national championship game follows on January 19 in Miami Gardens.
That date sits deep into the second semester of the academic year. Classes are underway. Campuses are back in full session. The obvious question lingers in the background. Will the players competing for a national title be excused from attending class?
College football now operates on a professional calendar while still claiming an academic identity. That tension grows harder to ignore with every added game.
Players Are Paid, and the NCAA Is Uneasy
The biggest shift in this new era is money flowing directly to players. Stars now receive compensation through schools, collectives, or third-party arrangements. Name, Image, and Likeness payments have effectively turned elite recruiting into a bidding process.
NCAA leadership does not like this reality. The organization has urged federal lawmakers to intervene and create national standards. Their stated concern centers on fairness and competitive balance. Without regulation, boosters can offer massive financial incentives to steer players toward specific programs.
The system is legal. It is also chaotic. And it has stripped away much of the control the NCAA once exercised.
The “Student-Athlete” Label Under Scrutiny
For decades, the NCAA relied on the term “student-athlete” as a legal shield. That label helped deny players salaries, workers’ compensation, and long-term health care for injuries sustained on the field. Courts often sided with schools, ruling athletes were students, not employees.
As a result, schools avoided financial responsibility for life-altering injuries. Scholarships were presented as fair compensation, though the arrangement overwhelmingly favored institutions.
Now, the landscape has shifted. Players earn money. Games stretch further into the academic calendar. The business looks professional in every way except accountability.
A New Order Nobody Fully Controls
College sports leaders find themselves uncomfortable in the world they helped create. The old model no longer holds. The new one lacks structure.
January 1st used to close the season. Now it opens the most profitable chapter. The page has turned. There is no going back.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
It was retrieved the next day.
There have been 59 Vince Lombardi trophies handed out, although it was not until 1970 that the “World Championship Game Trophy” was renamed the Lombardi Trophy following the death of the Green Bay Packers and Washington coach Vince Lombardi. The Lombardi Trophy will never be confused with hockey’s Stanley Cup when it comes to tall tales and legendary stories. But there is one tale that rivals that of some of the Stanley Cup stories.
The “World Championship Game Trophy” that was given to the New York Jets following the team’s Super Bowl III victory against the Baltimore Colts on January 12th, 1969 comes straight out of the Stanley Cup strange-but-true stories.
The Jets organization got the trophy in a postgame ceremony, but in all the excitement of winning, someone forgot to take the trophy back to New York. It sat in one of the locker rooms in the bowels of the Orange Bowl in Miami.
It was a story that could have been the equal of some of Stanley’s best tales, but the NFL doesn’t push the past history of the trophy.
“I am sure it was John Free’s (responsibility),” laughed one-time Jets trainer Jeff Snedeker years later in discussing who was supposed to be in charge of making sure the trophy accompanied the team on the trip back to New York. Free’s main job was making sure Jets quarterback Joe Namath got out of stadiums safely. No one was told to take the trophy and everyone seemed to follow orders. “He never did anything right.”
Neither Snedeker nor Free even knew the trophy was gone, but someone discovered the trophy was missing when the team got home.
“I remember the guy that either went to get it or brought it with him, his name was Tiger Ferraro,” said Snedeker. “I remember it was Tiger that brought it. I don’t remember if they sent him back or he was still there or they went back to the Orange Bowl.
“They did forget the trophy.”
Ferraro was sent back to Miami and retrieved the trophy, which was sitting all alone in the Orange Bowl. No one even bothered to move it after cleaning the locker room. Not even Stanley was left behind by a team in a dressing room and stayed overnight in a cold, damp locker room.
“Nobody expected us to win, so I guess they were not prepared to get the trophy,” said Snedeker, who as trainer might have been responsible for making sure everything was taken out of the room in Miami. “In the euphoria that followed the trophy, it was probably the least of anybody’s concern. Just that we got it, we didn’t have it physically was probably immaterial.”
The trophy eventually caught up with the Jets and was present during a New York City Hall celebration on January 11th, 1969.
An excerpt from the ebook: America’s Passion: How a Coal Miner’s Game Became the NFL in the 20th Century
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
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