Kevin Dupont

I'm willing to bet by now you won't be able to tell one college football game from another. The slow drip of death by bowl game began just after Halloween, as I recall. At least it seemed like we were still carving pumpkins when Wake Forest and Navy hunkered down for the highly-anticipated EagleBank Bowl.

Even more ghoulish, the bowl season doesn't end until Jan. 8 when Florida faces Oklahoma in Miami, just hours before scores of pitchers and catchers storm across the state for the start of spring training.

Want to get away?

When it's football bowl season, count me among those who want to get far, far away.

For the second New Year's Day in a row, and I suspect for quite a few more, the NHL has provided us with the perfect TV monotony-buster in the form of its outdoor Winter Classic. This Jan. 1, Wrigley Field is the venue, with the hometown Chicago Blackhawks taking on the Detroit Red Wings in what is officially game No. 554 of the 2008-'09 NHL regular season. Start time: 1 p.m. ET on NBC.

The Jan. 1, 2008 game was played at Ralph Wilson Stadium in East Aurora, N.Y., just south of Buffalo, and Mother Nature proved she had way better things to do than munch corn chips and watch over bowl games. As if on cue, or at least as if ordered by a NBC-TV producer, the skies over Lake Erie dumped a storybook motherlode of snow over the venue much of the morning and throughout the afternoon.

The Sabres and Penguins, many of them multimillionaires, played through the elements all day, turning just another regular-season afternoon game into an enchanting tableau that looked as if it had been shipped straight from Santa's workshop (do not open 'til New Year's Day).

The NHL always will be challenged to bring in big TV numbers in the U.S. Try as it might, it just won't ever be considered much more than the illegitimate son of the sports viewing industry. Tell that to a few Canadians (and there aren't many more than a few Canadians, anyway?), and they'll likely threaten never to let it snow again south of Toronto or Calgary. That's OK. We can get them back by promising never to consider the Blue Jays part of the great American pasttime.

The Winter Classic, in fact, produced a very strong rating's number (again, it's hockey) for the game at the Ralph. I suspect it will do even better this time, due in part to America's fascination with old baseball parks. Wrigley is a great setting, in one of America's top cities. For those who know a little about hockey, the Hawks and Wings are two of the NHL's oldest clubs, commonly referred to as Original Six squads — relating to a time when they were part of tiny, quaint league that also included only Montreal, Boston, New York and Toronto.

Those Original Six days, which had clubs routinely traveling city to city by train, are long gone. The NHL is a 30-team big-business venture nowadays, with annual gross revenues of some $2.5 billion. True, on a national level Americans don't eat it up or tune it in like football or basketball, but about two-thirds of the 24 U.S.-based rinks run near capacity for 41 home games. Across the border, the six Canadian cites routinely bang out every game, which makes them a winter a classic starting the first week of October every year and ending long after snowmelt.

The delightful part about the Winter Classic is that you don't have to be a hockey fan to enjoy it. If it snows — and let's hope it does — it makes not only for a more interesting and challenging game because of the ''slower'' ice, but it also makes for just a better overall look. And as we all now, TV is all about look.

When I watched the snow fall in western New York this past Jan. 1, I realized how the XFL (remember that boffo success?) so badly missed the mark in attempting to hook a new viewing audience. If you really want to get Americans to watch ''different'' sports TV, equip all those outdoor football stadia with snow-making machinery and get the white stuff blowing well in advance of the opening kickoff, then dial it up to the ''white-out'' level with that first boot of the ball. Oh, yeah. Now that's football.

The Winter Classic is best served under a snowy blanket. No question. If you love the game, the snowflakes aren't necessary, but a steady snow makes it all the better. The faces of the Sabres and Penguins players were painted with a perpetual smile as they played through it last time, as were the faces of the 60,000-plus in the Ralph's stands. For those of us who grew up playing the game outside, needing first to shovel off the spot on the pond where we intended to play, it was an enchanting walk down memory lane, without the need to coax our cranky backs back into upright, working order.

Winter Classic: Wings 6, Blackhawks 4      Video: Highlights  |  Slideshow: Top images Red Wings' firepower overwhelms Blackhawks Opinion: Cubs' curse hurts Blackhawks Expert: Outdoor game breath of fresh air Opinion: Fenway or Yankee Stadium next? Outdoor game shows how NHL trying to grow Clement: Future is bright for Blackhawks Special section: NHL on NBC

The NHL isn't going to turn the Winter Classic in a Super Bowl-like television ratings success. It really isn't about the game itself, who wins, or the various storylines of the individual players, their struggles, or the history of the teams.

But in a time when so much of what we watch on TV seems so predictable, and so polished, and so ordinary, the Winter Classic is anything but that. It takes an indoor game that was born in the wild, dating back to when it was played on wooden clogs that had dull steel blades running down the middle, and brings it back outside for a breath of fresh air.

Breathe deep. Expand your lungs. Use your imagination. Even if you're in Paris, Texas, or Sacramento, Calif., or Tallahassee, Fla., think how that wintry, chilled air seems to freeze your ribcage, and take a long look at the mirror finish of that rink. If it doesn't make you want to grab a stick, it's guaranteed to make you want to wrap your hands around a mug of hot chocolate.

Uh-uh, don't even try. You can't top that for New Year's Day.

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