SportsPants

This year, your favorite wearer of the SportsPants was blessed with the ability to attend the National Championship game at the Rose Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and Alabama Crimson Tide. Here is my journal of my three-day stay:

Friday January 8: When I awake, there is that split second when I’m hopeful that the bowl loss was just a bad dream. Then reality swats me across the face as though I were a hysterical woman. My team lost. Time to deal with it.

Down stairs, Texas fans gather in small groups talking quietly about their theories on why Texas lost the game. It starts at the obvious McCoy injury, but then the reasoning takes a bizarre turn and suddenly I’m listening to a bunch of conspiracy theorists who are convinced that something illegal/wrong/evil had to occur for Texas to actually lose. It sounds so asinine to my sports head that I have to accept the reality of the loss if only to distance myself from the insane.

So now I have to figure out how I can stay positive about this trip. It’s the same problem every fan has when they shell out big money for a championship game that their team loses: It's obviously just a game and the BCS is a load of crap anyway, but how do you view your investment as a positive experience when the whole reason you went doesn’t turn out well?

Here’s how: I found a great shirt that says “Keep Norman Dumb”. Now I have another way to make fun of Oklahoma.

Seriously though, I had a good time with the dad and I did get to spend three days in warm sunny L.A. while the rest of the country froze. It was an unfortunate game for a Longhorns fan, but we all bonded in an overcrowded stadium selling very mediocre beer and making us wait for half an hour to get into a restroom. That’s something not everyone can claim.

I just guess every rose really does have its thorns.

Okay, I apologize for that last line. Help me.