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The Daily Dose/January 2, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
It may be a new year, but it's the same old crap here at the Daily Dose, as we remain content to provide you, our valued reader, with more notes from around the human experience, inlcuding why New Year's Day now stinks, some light, thought interesting, On This Date action, hockey in football weather in Buffalo, some time-killing by the Writer's Shack staff plus the Column Four Foto: Bernadette Peters! All on today's exciting episode of The Daily Dose!
WELL, THIS WAS EXCITING: The Rose Bowl, usually one of only two or three reasons to watch college football nowadays, bored everyone, except USC fans, to tears as USC slaughtered Big Ten runner-up Illinois 47-13. The Rose Bowl could have taken West Virginia or Oklahoma or another really good team, but they passed on that opportunity, preferring to preserve their traditional Big Ten/Pac-10 match-up.
And Why Not? It wasn't as if the Tournament of Roses was going to make any more money inviting West Virginia or OU. They weren't. The game still would have sold out and tee vee revenues are set years in advance.
Dry, Technical Matter: We would have liked to have provided more coverage of this thriller, but the bastards in the Rose Bowl media relations office declined our credential request.
FunFact: This was not the first time a non-conference champion had appeared in the Rose Bowl. Nebraska appeared in the 2002 Rose Bowl, and Big Ten runner-up Minnesota defeated UCLA in the 1962 Rose Bowl after Ohio State declined their invitation. Also, Washington played USC in the 1944 Rose Bowl, despite having not even played in the then Pacific Coast Conference that season, preferring to play four games against mainly Army air force teams, and, in 1918 and 1919 navy, marine and army teams played.
One More Thing, As Long As The Pulpit Is Handy: Inviting a non-Big Ten team would not have been a complete desecration of the hallowed Rose Bowl grass and probably would have resulted in a better game. They did it in 2003 when Oklahoma defeated Washington State and the sun still rose in the east the next day, though historians note the Sooners did cream the Cougars in 2003.
And long before the Big Ten-Pac-8/10 agreement, the Rose Bowl had had a format of pitting the top team in the west against a top team from the east. Schools like Brown, Alabama, Notre Dame, Harvard, Duke, among others, have all appeared in the Rose Bowl. Heck, Duke even hosted it once, in 1942, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and officials actually feared they might make it all the way to the west coast.
This Doesn't Bode Well: So Illinois goes to the Rose Bowl and gets their lunch handed to them. Illinois, of course, in November defeated then and current #1 Ohio State, who is slated to play LSU in the national championship game so maybe Ohio State will get slaughtered like they did last year. We certainly hope so. Another blow out national championship game just might nudge the D-I playoff cause a little farther along.
More To Come: There was a time when New Year's Day, or Monday, January 2, also meant college football season was over. Sometimes we'd go to bed arguing about, but not really getting too worked up over, who was or was not voted the number one team, but everyone woke up the next realizing the holidays were over and it was time down to the business of constructing a new year. We didn't have to worry about seeing college football until September, which was all right, because the NFL playoffs were going on and it was January, for Pete's sake, basketball and hockey were in progress and before you knew it pitchers and catchers would be reporting.
Not anymore. The Fiesta Bowl is Wednesday, the Orange Bowl Thursday and something called the International Bowl, which gets the George Schultz Award for International Relations by foisting Ball State and Rutgers - teams Americans are barely familiar with - on the good people of Canada.
We Report, You Decide: Also considered for the above paragraph was the following line: "…and something called the International Bowl which foists Ball State and Rutgers on the people of Toronto, the lowest point in Canadian/US relations since the Platt sisters invaded Calgary in the seminal porn flick Northern Exposure."
We'll let the reader decide which was better.
ON THIS DATE: In 533 Mercurius becomes Pope John II, becoming the first pope to take a newl name upon assuming the papacy. Previous popes had used their birth names. The practice of popes taking a new name would not become commonplace until late in the tenth century.
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!: On this date in 1935, the kidnapping and murder trial of Lindbergh kidnapping suspect Bruno Hauptman begins in Flemington, New Jersey. Hauptman would be convicted in February and executed in October 1936.
Floor It: In 1974, in response to the Arab oil embargo, President Richard Nixon signs a bill making the speed limit 55 mph, a law that could not have been more ignored had prizes been issued for non-compliance.
WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON HERE?: In weather more appropriate for the Insight Bowl in Boise, the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Buffalo Sabres in a game played at Ralph Wilson Stadium, normally the home of the Buffalo Bills football team. An NHL-record 71,217 fans watched the game, most of which was played in the snow. Further coverage of this game, which, like most of the other games in other sports played today was basically without meaning - it was a regular-season NHL game, after all, is beyond the scope of this column.
TOO MUCH TIME ON OUR HANDS: Faced with not too much to do today, the staff here at the Writer's Shack took on a small project: to see what the range of dates were on the calendar included in the Microsoft Outlook email client.
It took a few minutes, but it appears the calendar starts at April 1, 1601 and runs through August 31, 4500, which we reckon to be a span of 1,058,739 days, or just over 2900 years.
We were wondering why these dates were picked is not entirely clear. I mean, 2,900 years is a long time and 4/1/1601 through 8/31/4500 is well beyond the life span of anyone currently needing to make appointments. Since the staff here at the Writer's Shack subscribes to the know-a-lot-about-a-little-but-not-a-hell-of-a-lot-about-anything philosophy, we were aware that the Gregorian calendar came into use about this time, so perhaps that was why the 4/1/1601 date was chosen, but a little research on that matter shows that no, the Gregorian calendar took effect in 1582.
Conspiracy Theory: As for the end date, maybe Bill Gates knows something we don't.
A Final Thought: Adding and subtracting these two dates together gives you the following phone numbers: 872-6101 and 790-2899. These could well be Bill Gates' home and cell numbers. We simply don't know.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The last American flag to serve for only one year was the 49-star flag, which flew after Alaska achieved statehood on July 4, 1959 and flew until Hawaii became a state on July 4, 1960.
Today's Trivia Question:Which Big Ten teams has USC not beaten in the Rose Bowl? - Answer next time! Submit answers in the appropriate thread in the message boards. Do not clog up my inbox with them. Thank you in advance.
Threats? Recipes? Trivia question answers? Email The Writer's Shack Here!
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