Speaking as a child of the '90s

Remembering a great game that never was

It’s New Year’s Day, which means lots of great college football action. It also means that the national championship game, this year between LSU and Clemson, is coming up soon. The concept of a national champion, at least one that was decided on the field, is relatively new to college football, and we have the College Football Playoff today largely because of what took place during the 1997 season.

That year, we had two undefeated teams from the major conferences: the Michigan Wolverines and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. It would have been great to see those two teams square off to determine who was the best team in the nation, but it didn’t happen because Michigan, the Big Ten Champion, was obligated to play in the Rose Bowl against Washington State.

Michigan won its game against WSU, while Nebraska took care of business against Tennessee in the Orange Bowl. Because of that, we had a split national championship: Michigan finished as the #1 team in the AP poll, while Nebraska finished first in the coach’s poll.

The next year, the NCAA instituted the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which included an automatic national championship game between the country’s two highest ranked teams. In 2014, this system was replaced by the College Football Playoff (CFP), which takes the top four teams and has them play each other to determine the national champion.

I would have loved to have seen a 1997 game between Michigan and Nebraska, yet I’m not sure whether I like the current system. There’s something to be said for having a clear-cut best team determined on the field. Yet I’m also a fan of the traditional Rose Bowl matchups between the Big Ten and the Pac-12. Thankfully, we do get that this year, between Wisconsin and Oregon, though Wisconsin was only chosen because Big Ten Champion Ohio State was in the CFP.

Who do you think would have won in 1997 between Michigan and Nebraska? Anyway, enjoy this year’s bowl action!

Remember the Y2K scare?

We’re about to begin the year 2020, which means a new decade. 1999 was not just the end of a decade: It was the end of a century, AND a millennium. If you were around back then, you should feel fortunate that you got to witness such an event.

Yet if you were around back then, you also probably remember that many people thought the year 2000 would bring about a catastrophic event: Y2K, where all our technology that was programmed with a two-digit year (such as “99” for 1999) would malfunction when it was forced to roll over.

There were runs on canned food, bottled water, and other such items because people thought we might be heading back into a dark age without all the technology we’d grown accustomed to. I remember watching the year 2000 roll in on TV, and as each hour went by and a new time zone moved into the new millennium… absolutely nothing happened.

It seems almost comical, looking back 20 years, that there was such a scare at the end of 1999. Doomsday prophecies were everywhere. Yet we survived. Everything continued as normal, and we’ve even made tremendous strides in technology during the two decades since.

Do you have any memories of the Y2K scare and the dawn of a new millennium? Let me know!

Welcome to my ’90s blog

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 20 years since that glorious decade of the 1990s came to an end. With the world about to embark on a new decade, I’m using it as an opportunity to embark on a new adventure: a blog all about the ’90s, my favorite decade.

Hi, my name is Brian. I’m 34 years old, and I live in St. Joseph, MI with my wife and two stepsons. I have a lot of experience writing; I’ve written three books and am a contributor for three different FanSided websites, along with our local newspaper.

I took the name of my blog, “Speaking as a child of the ’90s”, from a line in the Pearl Jam song, “Habit” which was part of their No Code album released in 1996. To me, the ’90s was the best era for music, TV, sports, and just about everything else. So, this blog will be about whatever I feel like writing about related to that decade.

Since I’ve only lived through (and am old enough to remember) three full decades, I may be biased when it comes to determining which decade was the best to live in. All I know is that I have lots of wonderful memories growing up in the ’90s, and I look forward to sharing many of those with you.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep up with this blog regularly, grow my audience, and provide content that is both interesting and insightful. Thanks for reading, and please come back often!