Bowl Bonus: Mean Green playing on New Year’s Day

Published 12:40 am Tuesday, December 31, 2013

What’s better for a kid than a holiday? Not much that I can think of, except maybe a snow day off from school. What a special time of year this is, with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s coming in rapid-fire succession. For sports fans, that means overdosing on football.

Actually, the college football bowl season is a holiday by itself, and these days that holiday seems to last forever — Dec. 21 to Jan. 6 to be exact.

We live in an age when more is considered better — more high school playoff teams, more college teams playing big-boy football (125 teams in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and counting), and more bowl games.

There were 15 bowls in 1980, 19 in 1990, 25 in 2000 and the current 35 bonanza as of 2010. Oh and there’s four new bowls set to debut next season.

One of my favorite games to watch as a kid was the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where the Southwest Conference champion would go. I can remember watching SMU take on Pittsburgh and Dan Marino in 1983, Houston play Boston College and Heisman winner Doug Flutie in 1985, Texas A&M face Notre Dame and Dallas’ own Tim Brown in 1988, and Troy Aikman and UCLA come to Big D to play Arkansas in 1989.

The Cotton Bowl was on New Year’s Day, and later that afternoon and night you looked forward to the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar bowls. After that, the season was over and a national champion was crowned — sometimes more than one.

Anyway — to my point — getting to play on New Year’s Day was a really big deal. I never thought in a million years that my alma mater — the University of North Texas, better known for its music and journalism programs, would ever play on this special day.

But here we are, the Mean Green getting ready to play the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (best known as UNLV) on Jan. 1 and — gasp! — at Cotton Bowl stadium of all places, a short drive down I-35 from Denton. The Mean Green could not have scripted things any better.

College football has changed drastically, and that train isn’t stopping any time soon.

In 2010, the annual Cotton Bowl Classic moved to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington and today we have the Heart of Dallas Bowl at Cotton Bowl stadium in Fair Park.

There’s no longer a major bowl in Fair Park, but at least it’s something.

Texas Tech beat Northwestern of the Big Ten in the inaugural game in 2011. Houston trounced historic Penn State the next year, and Big 12 power Oklahoma State dominated Purdue of the Big Ten a year ago.

And now it’s UNT vs. UNLV in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Not exactly big names, but they represent two of the better feel-good stories in all of college football.

This is the Mean Green’s first bowl since going to four straight New Orleans Bowls from 2001 to 2004. It had been that long since the Mean Green had even won back-to-back games before finishing 8-4 and contending for the West Division championship in its first season in Conference USA.

The UNLV Rebels are going bowling for just the fourth time in their history after a 7-5 record.

Both programs were picked to finish fifth in their respective divisions and way out of postseason contention. Now they will share the stage with the Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl, also being played Wednesday, although the Heart of Dallas has been relegated to TV coverage on ESPNU and given a bleary-eyed start time of 11 a.m.

But imagine if North Texas wins. Those highlights would look good on ESPN for the rest of the day.