I’ve learned to celebrate New Year’s Eve with whoever’s next to me.
Before I started covering college football, I celebrated with friends and loved ones and a bit of rum.
Then, my career started taking me on the road.
Several years ago, I found myself in a Jacksonville, Florida, haunt when the ball dropped, a couple of days before covering the only bowl game Jeremy Pruitt would coach for Tennessee. The Vols won a thrilling Gator Bowl against Indiana. The less said, the better about the rest of the Pruitt era.
Two years later, New Year’s Eve took me to the press box at Jerry World, where Alabama beat Cincinnati in a College Football Playoff semifinal on the final day of 2021.
I was back on the trail with Alabama two years later. That New Year’s Eve got sidetracked when my Uber driver wrecked in Los Angeles. On the bright side, Uber comped my ride. The next day, I covered Nick Saban’s final game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
In 2022, the year before my eventful trip to California, I typed furiously at Mercedes-Benz Stadium as the new year neared. While others kissed up and down the East Coast, I watched Ohio State’s Noah Ruggles hook a field goal at midnight. Georgia prevailed by a single point.
Georgia’s 2022 playoff win set a high New Year’s Eve bar
Georgia’s 42-41 victory in that CFP semifinal in Atlanta remains the greatest playoff game I’ve ever covered, with apology to this year’s national championship.
But, it wasn’t my favorite New Year’s Eve. That came this past year, when the person next to me on New Year’s Eve was my wife.
No game or press box can compete with her.
I was lucky enough to draw the CFP quarterfinal game between Georgia and Mississippi in New Orleans in prime time on Jan. 1. The Superdome is just a 200-mile zip on I-10 from our house, so I decided to spend Dec. 31 at home and drive to New Orleans on game day.
This allowed for a rare treat: I watched a college playoff game on the couch with my wife.
She doesn’t have a favorite team, and she doesn’t watch much football, but games are more fun with a rooting interest, so she chose to root for “the U.”
Never has someone who deep down cared so little cheered so vigorously as my wife did when Miami’s Keonte Scott scored on a pick-six.
I got a kick out of seeing her newfound (and short-lived) fandom, but I didn’t much care who won that Cotton Bowl. I just wanted to see a good game.
We got one, a 24-14 Miami upset of Ohio State.
Then, we flipped the channel and let drunk Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen entertain us while we rolled dice and sipped cocktails, knowing we’d never catch Cooper or Cohen on the inebriation scale, but cherishing a New Year’s Eve at home together all the same.
The next day, I chronicled Ole Miss fans chanting “Pete! Pete! Pete!” and Trinidad Chambliss spinning, sprinting, passing and otherwise magicking the Rebels to a heroic takedown of Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs, while Lane Kiffin tweeted through it.
Yes, indeed, I drew a great CFP quarterfinal assignment, from the 31st through the 1st.
Why CFP won’t play on New Year’s Eve in 2026
Schedules change, though. Bowls rotate assignments. So, alas, I won’t call this tradition.
Dec. 31 falls on a Thursday in 2026. The CFP doesn’t want to go up against the NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football.’ So, the CFP will take a one-year hiatus from having a New Year’s Eve game.
This season, one quarterfinal will be on Dec. 30, with three more on Jan. 1. No quarterfinals will be played in New Orleans. The Sugar Bowl has a semifinal on its dance card in mid-January. I suspect I’ll be there.
Don’t know yet where I’ll be on New Year’s Eve. Depends on which quarterfinal assignment I draw.
No matter where I am, I’ll celebrate with whoever’s next to me. Perhaps I’ll find myself next to a fellow sportswriter in a pub, before we cover a game the next day. Maybe, after ‘Thursday Night Football’ ends, the barkeep will flip the channel to see what Anderson and Andy are up to. (I have a guess.) Then, the next day, if we’re lucky, we’ll cover a game as good as the one I covered in 2022 in Atlanta.
That wouldn’t be bad. It just won’t match 2025.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.