I am burning the after-midnight oil on speaktherights.com tonight/this morning.
I am watching the Holiday Bowl. I wish you could understand how glad I am able to still call this game the Holiday Bowl. The Holiday Bowl was just that for many years. Then dollar signs and corporate sponsorship came along and put a sponsor’s name in front of the Holiday Bowl. This year it is called the National Funding Holiday Bowl. I have no idea what National Funding is. I have paid no attention to the commercials.
I am glad this game, played in San Diego, is still called the Holiday Bowl. Not the Padre Bowl. Not the Sea World Bowl…though I think Sea World sponsored the bowl for a while. It is still the Holiday Bowl. Be glad, Southern Cal and Swissconsin that you are playing in a bowl that has kept a decent name. I guess whomever won the “Quick Lane Bowl” will be glad to put the trophy in the trophy case…but talk about a goofy name. The Holiday Bowl is not the Granddaddy of them all…but it still holds a good name and it still holds some good history. It must…or I sure wouldn’t be typing these words so late.
The San Diego Chargers are looking to move to Los Angeles and a new stadium, so I have heard. The Chargers play in the stadium they are playing the Holiday Bowl tonight. The bowl game has always been played there.
It was December 21st. The year was 1979. The teams playing in the Holiday Bowl, the 2nd Holiday Bowl, were the Brigham Young University Cougars and the Indiana University Hoosiers.
Folks familiar with Hoosier football, there are not many of us, can attest that this was the greatest Indiana Hoosier FOOTBALL game of all time.
Heading into the game the Indiana Hoosiers had a 7 win and 4 defeat record.
The BYU Cougars were 11 and 0. They won all their games. They were ranked #9 in the country in the AP and UPI polls.
The Indiana Hoosiers won the game 38 to 37. It was the only time in Lee Corso’s nine year career at Indiana that the Hoosiers made a bowl. Keep in mind there were probably half as many bowls back then as there are now. When you made a bowl it meant a little more. I acknowledge there are players on a 6-7 Nebraska team that would just beat UCLA in the Foster Farms Bowl that would argue with me.
What I remember more than anything about the 1979 Indiana Hoosiers appearance in the Holiday Bowl was that I was so glad that Mom walked through the front door of our house at nearly midnight to find her way to the television to witness the last few minutes of the game with my Dad and me. The three of us cheered and laughed and had a great time watching the final plays of what for us was history. Indiana’s first bowl win in their second bowl ever. They lost the 1968 Rose Bowl to USC and a running back named O.J. Simpson.
So why was I excited when my Mom walked through the door? Well, in 1979 we moved from Brownstown, Indiana to Harrison County, Indiana. Mom took a job as a registered nurse at Floyd Memorial Hospital in New Albany. Many a night I was up too late waiting for her to come through the door after working her 3 to 11 shift. She would walk in the door and I would hug her and grab the Raisin Bran and pour two bowls of cereal. One for her and one for me.
On this December night there was no time for cereal. There was just time to watch in disbelief as the Indiana Hoosiers beat a top ten team in a college football bowl game. That has not happened before or since. I doubt many remember how big that game really was.
The second quarter of the 2015 Holiday Bowl is coming to a close and Swissconsin just took a 13 to 7 lead. It is very late…but I think I will stay with it. If nothing else, I can stay with a late Holiday Bowl out of pure obligation. I am obligated to one of the finest memories of football watching on television I ever shared with my Mom and Dad. That is enough to hold on to…no matter how late they kick a Holiday Bowl off!
Speaking the Holiday Bowl Rights…
Danny Johnson