A Recap To One Of The Most Exciting Days In Sports

The 2012 Winter Classic started off an epic day of sports on Monday.
There's always a buzz about New Year's Day sporting events with the recent addition of the Winter Classic to the Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl festivities, the day has only gotten better. In this case it was the day after, but it still had the same anticipation of year's past. But, this time, the day lived up to hype and then some.

2012 Winter Classic
New York Rangers 3, Philadelphia Flyers 2
The Winter Classic, excluding last year's overhyped debacle, has been a wild success every year. This year, though, we saw the bar raised and potentially set. Philadelphia was a phenomenal host starting with a surprisingly entertaining Alumni Game, which in the past was a big bust. Their fans were wonderfully receptive and incredibly loud both in the parking lot and in the stadium. The well-constructed Philadelphia Sports Complex basically became a big party all morning and early afternoon on Monday, and the party continued well into the game.

Once the game started though, the Classic became just another heated and important Flyers-Rangers game with serious Atlantic Division implications. For the first time in the short history of the Winter Classic we had a hockey. A plain old hockey game. That's where this event differed from the past where it was more of a show, with a bunch of riff-raft. The Flyers jumped out to a 2-0 lead after a hard-fought scoreless period. But the game took a dramatic change when grinder Mike Rupp scored a goal to make it 2-1, celebrating in Jaromir Jagr style with a salute. Philadelphia took offense to Rupp's showmanship, but instead gaining motivation from it, they slipped into a cage of rattlesnakes. Mike Rupp tallied another one, before Brad Richards finished the Flyers off midway through the third. The Flyboys did have an opportunity to tie the game when Danny Briere was awarded a penalty shot after Rangers' defensman Ryan McDonagh was found throwing a rager in the net. Briere went 5 hole hunting on Lundqvist, but King Henrik wasn't fooled, and the first penalty shot in the history of the Winter Classic went to the goaltender.

The game was played with no hiccups or oddities like most of the Classics past. We even had some flurries in the end of the second period adding to the aura without altering the game. I think we've finally secured the proper way to put on the Classic and we just got back to some good old fashion pond hockey.

Rose Bowl
Oregon 45, Wisconsin 38
If it wasn't awesome enough just to watch the beautiful twilight in Southern California, how about watching two teams in a a blazing shootout. Oregon and Wisconsin set all types of Rose Bowl scoring records, and did so in crisp fashion.

Oregon's helmets outshined everything, even their own high powered offense. 

Oregon came out of their locker room spilling all types of swagger all over the Rose Bowl field. Their metallic helmets literally stole the show, and should set a precedent for ridiculously sick helmets for decades to come. Once they were on the field, their offense kicked it into gear, including a ridiculous 155 yard, 2 carry, 2 TD performance by freshman sensation De'Anthony Thomas. Russell Wilson played valiantly in leading his Winconsin Badgers to 38 points, but honestly there is no way any Big Ten team can keep up in a shootout with Oregon. This game had all types of big plays on both sides of the ball and Wisconsin was not lacking in that department. But, realistically, no one can go big play for big play with Oregon. They have too many absurdly fast athletes that can score in a flurry of ways. Plus, I'm sure for half of the game Wisconsin was overwhelmed by Oregon's style. I know I was watching it.

This was Oregon's first Rose Bowl victory since they beat UPenn 9-0 in 1917. I'm pretty sure this will be the beginning of a nice winning streak, but don't listen to me, just listen to their helmets.



Fiesta Bowl
Oklahoma State 41, Stanford 38

Justin Blackmon made burning the Stanford D a habit all day.

Even though everyone was hyping up this Fiesta Bowl to be the "bowl of the year" did you really think it could live up to the precedent set by the Rose Bowl three hours earlier? No way. But it did, and then so.

The Blackmon vs. Luck Bowl turned out to be all that and more. However, Luck actually took a back seat to underrated running back Stepfan Taylor who bursted onto the national scene with a 177 yard, 2 TD performance for the ages. Blackmon was an absolute monster, catching everything thrown his way, turning in an 8 catch, 186 yard, 3 TD game that should sign, seal and deliver himself the title of "Megatron 2.0"

Tucson, Arizona was buzzing at the end of the game, when Stanford sophomore kicker, Jordan Williamson, was lining up a 35 yard kick that would send Luck off to the NFL as a winner. Instead the poor kid missed that one, and another one in OT, giving Oklahoma State the opportunity to put the game away. Ok. State kicker Quinn Sharp hit the game winning field goal and Justin Blackmon walked away with game MVP.

This game's late dramatics weren't necessarily exciting as their were surprising. Two misses by a young kicker like that is just unfortunate, and even though I still think Ok. State deserved to win, it sucks they had to do it in that fashion. But, life is unfair, and as our upperclassmen depart for the NFL, we got to see Blackmon steal the national spotlight that Luck had dominated for the previous two years. While Andrew Luck pretty much waded in his #1 pick water, Blackmon was swimming laps around the NFL scouts. The kid showed up as a hyped up wide receiver and left a legend. The kid is like a 5-tool player in baseball; he can run, catch, break tackles, run precise routes and has vision.

As for his team deserving a national championship bid after this win, I still think Alabama and LSU are rightfully where they are. But if LSU goes out and molly whops 'Bama, expect Mike Gundy and the Stillwater faithful to whine and complain for days. Either way, we need a playoff, and the superior play b our #3 and #4 teams in the Fiesta Bowl simply proved that point even more.