Finding the National Champion

Today begins the countdown to BCS National Championship.  Six Bowl Games were contested today.  ESPN has the contract to air most of the games this year, and so it came that in a house of so-so take-it-or-leave-it sports fans, the tv has been tuned to ESPN from the end of the Tournament of Roses Parade until right now, as I am half-listening to the second half of the Tostitos' Fiesta Bowl.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I am no football fan.  I will usually find anything to distract me from on-field action.  The fact that the players are in tight white pants offers no incentive to watch the games.  But I always catch a case of Bowl Fever.  It may be the ESPN I Am the Champion ad campaign or possibly the fact that I serve as the my family's Bowl Pick-'Em Bet Commissioner and scorekeeper ($10 bet, person who picks the most bowl winners picks the charity to which the pot is donated).  Whatever it is, for 3 weeks each winter I can talk football with the best of them.

More often than not, save my official Bowl Pick-'Em Bet Commissioner duties, my interest is not in the outcome of the game or the action on the field.  No the sportsmanship stories capture my attention.  From Urban Meyer coaching an historic last game against living-legend Joe Paterno to the overlooked and underestimated giant-killing TCU Horned Frogs; today was a day of sappy stories, tugging at a sensitive non-sports-fan girl like me.

From 11 a.m. through 9:30 p.m., I was fine, distracted enough by the human interest but still able to get work done during the on-field action.  Then came the half-time coverage during the Fiesta Bowl.  It was a piece on Tostitos' partnership with the USO and college football greats Connect to Home Bowl Experience for the troops in Iraq.  That's it, I'm now a blubbering mess.  Between interview clips with Bobby Bowden and Gene Stallings, and the troops participating in the game, it was more of a tear-jerker than any Lifetime movie could possibly be.

As it turned out, my search for the best sportsman of the night led me not to a player or coach, but to a corporate sponsor!