In praise of The Good Noise at Christmas

And other vitally important stuff you can only get here

Welcome to another installment of FreeForAll Thursday. We cover Christmas blues, dopey bowl games and when to ignore money talk. Also, wisdom from Beano Cook and a tune of questionable merit. Thanks to all. Consider a paid subscription, which guarantees you this brilliance 5 or so days a week.

Coolest gift o’ the season. My son gave me this poster from my favorite TV episode, ever. Walking Distance, from Season 1 of The Twilight Zone. The words are Rod Serling’s unforgettable postscript.

We raise our children to leave us, but that doesn’t make it easier when they do. Kelly, aka the Erstwhile Kid Down the Hall, left this morning. Back to Brooklyn and a life he has grown to love. A life we prepared him for, evidently. If kids only knew how random raising kids can be. Trial Meets Error every day, armed only with good intentions.

It’s too quiet today. It’s the only day of the year I don’t praise the silence. Forty years working mostly behind a desk and in front of a computer screen in my office at home have nudged me steadily toward solitude. I like being with people. But not a lot of the time.

Christmas is different. The good noise that happens when a family is together. I like that. I need it. It doesn’t happen much, certainly not at our house.

A son in Brooklyn, sisters in Baltimore and Bradenton, a brother in North Carolina, friends and other relatives scattered here and there. America is a big place, especially at Christmas.

It’s when I welcome the good noise. It has a way of reminding us who we are and what we’re here for. The noise can come in the form of memories recalled, recent moments shared. It can be light or heavy, as the situation demands. Mostly, it just has to be. The good noise is the background music of our lives. We never feel so secure as on Christmas Day. I feel for any who can’t feel it, too.

The house expands after Christmas. Soon enough, I’ll adjust to the empty spaces, so lately filled with those who define the meaning of our lives. Not today. Today is for adjusting, regrouping, remembering yesterday with gratitude, suffering today’s silence while leaning a shoulder into tomorrow. We raise them to leave. But why so soon?

Now, then. . .

IT WAS SOMETIME DURING THE SECOND HALF of the Military Bowl — which featured Virginia Tech and Somebody, who were playing in the driving rain Somewhere, for the benefit of God Knows Who — that the thought re-occurred:

Why?

I’d had this thought before. In Shreveport, LA, in 1984, as I sat in a quasi-high school stadium covering Virginia Tech play Jerkwater State in the Independence Bowl. Excuse me, the Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl.

The thought returned with a vengeance in 2000 and 2001, as I motored to and from Detroit, to bear witness to UC playing in the Motor City Bowl. The Bearcats were forced under penalty of death honored to play in the game two years in a row.

It was a blast, participants said, on the record. Yes, indeed. Practicing during Christmas (the games were Dec. 26 and 29) and hanging out in Detroit for a week in December was truly special, damned near Shangri-La. Keep improving, Bearcats, and the Yakutsk Borscht Bowl could be in your futures.

More of the same in 2003. Miami played Louisville in the GMAC Bowl in Ben Roethlisberger’s last game. The GMAC was such a prestigious holding, it has ripped through four title sponsors since. Tell us what the 68 Ventures are in the 68 Ventures Bowl, win fabulous prizes chosen just for you.

Especially now. Players opt out of bowl games, because they’re smarter than we give them credit for. Coaches are worrying about managing the portal, NIL defections, high school signing date. They have bigger things to do than show up at a chamber of commerce luncheon in support of the For The Love of God, Why? Bowl.

The games were nothing but network programming for years. Now, they’re watered-down network programming. USA Today:

One report Tuesday suggested that Texas A&M would have a maximum of 55 scholarship players available to play against Oklahoma State in the Texas Bowl.

Florida State is projected to be down roughly 20 players for the Orange Bowl, and several of Georgia’s stars are likely out as well.

The Sun Bowl between Notre Dame and Oregon State will be contested by two quarterbacks who threw a combined 26 passes this season. 

It only gets worse next year, when the playoff expands to 12 teams.

The schools don’t make money off the games, at least not much. Logistical costs bleed them of their payouts. Ever ponder the cost of transporting 100-or-so marching band members to the 68 Ventures Bowl? Me, neither, but it ain’t cheap.

Schools also are committed to buying big blocks of tickets they can’t sell.

In public, quasi-am football types will argue that making a bowl is good for recruiting and building momentum for the following year. Coaches say they love the added practice time. They’ll say they consider it a “reward’’ for a season well done.

Ha, yeah. See Motor City Bowl, above.

Apparently host burgs think it’s all worth it. The number of bowls seems to spread yearly, like a fungus. The working definition of “challenging’’ is a fan having to choose between the 68 Ventures Bowl and a frontal lobotomy.

Meantime, Virginia Tech beat Tulane Wednesday, 41-20, in the Military Bowl. It was a masterful display. Tech coach Brent Pry’s reward for winning was having a jug of water dumped on his head. In the Biblical rain. Seems redundant.

Now, then. . .

DURING OUR MONEY TALK WEDNESDAY, I failed to mention my Money Philosophy as it applies to sports. It’s a very good philosophy.

When a season or event begins, money talk ends.

It’s especially useful in baseball. I try very hard not to type a dollar sign between April and October, unless it’s in a Johnny Thinwallet rant about the ridiculous rise in cigar prices. The reason is simple:

Once the season begins, the money is irrelevant. Money talk never helped me enjoy a Joey Votto line drive. Other teams’ money moves might steal from you a chunk of hope. Or, you might consider this big fact from last season:

Of the eight teams to pay a (luxury tax) penalty, the three with the highest tax bills missed the playoffs: the Mets ($100.8 million), Padres ($39.7 million) and Yankees ($32.4 million).

Athletes earn what the market bears. Arguing whether they’re “worth it’’ is pointless. They’re worth whatever someone wants to pay them. To begrudge them their money is hypocritical, unless you’d turn down millions and started wearing a habit to work.

TOMMY SMOTHERS DIED Wednesday, of cancer at age 86. Youse of a Certain Age will remember him as part of a comedy duo with his brother Dick. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour lasted three years on CBS, just long enough for the network censors to get the bros in trouble for their political views, especially regarding the Vietnam War.

I didn’t especially understand them, because I was 9 in 1967 and wasn’t quite an expert on that crazy Asian war. Plus, the Brothers didn’t make me laugh like Get Smart did.

Jim Daugherty, Marine reservist, didn’t much care for them. They provoked in him language we don’t use in This Space.

Tommy’s death did have me flipping my channels back to that era and the TV I did enjoy. In particular order:

Combat!, Rat Patrol, The Mod Squad, The Monkees (hey, hey!), Batman, The Wild, Wild West.

Yours, please.

THE MILITARY BOWL was played in Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The stadium is a monument to history, dressed in plaques and memorials containing the names of battles and places where the Navy and Marines have fought: Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, Peleliu etc.

The one game I covered there, I happened to walk in with Beano Cook, a good writer and a very amusing TV/radio presence. Lee Corso before Lee Corso.

Cook got to the stadium gates, observed the memorials and offered this:

“Helluva schedule.’’

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Some people love this tune, others hate it. IMO, even those who like it keep that like to themselves, fearing ridicule. I’m torn. Nice music, well intended message. Laughably bad lyrics.

Met my old lover in the grocery store. . .

Really?