The world according to Jim: • Can we close our eyes and pretend, just for a while, that this coming Wednesday’s Rose Bowl matchup is truly old school? Yeah, we know. Pasadena’s bowl game will hang on to its traditions as long as possible – that 2 p.m. New Year’s Day starting time, at least in years when it’s not a College Football Playoff semifinal, as well as that magnificent fourth-quarter sunset reflecting off the mountainside and the presence of the Tournament of Roses grand marshal for the pregame coin flip. (In this case it’s Billie Jean King, and what better choice is there?) • And we have the West Coast, in CFP No. 1 seed Oregon, against the Midwest, in Ohio State, an echo of Rose Bowls past. We also have the Big Ten champ going against … oh, right. Oregon is the Big Ten champ, and also previous conqueror of Ohio State in an October conference showdown in Eugene, 32-31. We’ve now completed almost one whole football season after the passing of the Pac-12 as we knew it. And for some of us it’s still quite complicated. … • Consider this, too: As we noted following last year’s Michigan-Alabama semifinal in the Arroyo Seco, the days where we might occasionally have a quasi-home game involving USC or (more improbably) UCLA on Jan. 1 in Pasadena seem farther away than ever. Nothing I’m seeing with either football program suggests that’s going to change any time soon. Hopefully at least the L.A. schools are spending that money from the Big Ten media contract wisely. At this point, that’s small consolation for those who care more about wins and losses than the bottom line. (Which would include, oh, 98% of the people who buy tickets.) … • The results on the first weekend of the 12-team CFP suggest maybe it’s better to cut the field off at eight teams. Four games, four routs, as well as the feeling that assuring four conference championship game winners of first-round byes skewed the bracket (quite unfavorably, in the case of the Ducks). The problem: If you take away those byes, the only significance for those conference championship games is to fatten conference bank accounts. That is powerful motivation in big-time college sports, true, but under these circumstances it doesn’t do much competitively. … • The optimum solution, but don’t expect it for a while: A 16-team bracket, with no byes and a more intelligent seeding process. The next best solution: A 14-team bracket and byes to the top two conference champions. And yes, 10 times out of 10 those two champs will be from the Big Ten and SEC. What else do you expect in a college sports model transitioning toward stratification (i.e., a Super League and the Group of Everybody Else)? … • We wondered last week, in light of Marshall having to drop out of a bowl game because of defections to the transfer portal, about the efficacy of bowl sponsors spreading NIL money to assure that players would actually play. It’s happening. Cheez-It, sponsor of the Citrus Bowl, has NIL arrangements with the starting quarterbacks of both South Carolina and Illinois, this year’s participants. And Snoop Dogg is spreading the love, and the wealth, to players from Colorado State and Miami of Ohio who will be playing in the “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl presented by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop.” So here’s a question: If you’re a player, and you had to choose between the traditional bowl gifts (which are usually pretty expansive) or the cash, which would you rather have? … • Here’s a reminder that in the sports world, Monday should be an unofficial national holiday: GOATs day. It is the shared birthday of Sandy Koufax (who turns 89 on Monday), Tiger Woods (49) and LeBron James (40). Also among the sports figures born on that day is retired boxing champ and TV personality Laila Ali (47). … • And did you notice LeBron’s final words on Wednesday night, in his postgame interview after the Lakers edged the Golden State Warriors during the NBA’s Christmas Day quintupleheader: “I love the NFL, but Christmas is our day.” You can scoff, sure. The early word from the NFL was that about one-third of Netflix’s 282.7 global subscribers were tuned into the Kansas City Chiefs-Pittsburgh Steelers game, with few buffering issues, and official Nielsen numbers released by Netflix had more than 24 million viewers watching both that game and the (lopsided) Ravens-Texans nightcap. Also, two NFL games last Saturday were clear ratings winners over the two CFP games during the day Saturday. Bottom line: The NFL dominates any TV attraction that goes up against it. … • But consider: Lakers-Warriors, with a prime-time start in the East, LeBron vs. Steph Curry and no NFL competition, drew 7.763 million viewers on ABC, the most-watched regular-season game in five years. That included a peak of more than 8.3 million viewers around 7:30 Pacific – or just in time for the frenzied finish of the Lakers’ 115-113 win. … • Bottom line II: If you’re not specifically dealing with the financials, how much do TV ratings really matter? We have this assumption that whatever draws fewer viewers is a less significant event. A lot of times, that’s just not true. … Related Articles Sports | Alexander: The readers respond, and today it’s their turn Sports | Alexander: Remembering Rickey Henderson, Surf Dawg Sports | Alexander: Jonas Never turns sports heroes into masterpieces Sports | Alexander: For college players, non-playoff bowl games decrease in relevance Sports | Alexander: Chargers’ playoff hopes dwindle as margin for error shrinks • Which brings us to this supposed crisis about dipping NBA ratings and their possible causes. Too many 3-point attempts? Too much load management? Too early in the season, perhaps, and not enough people who really care about the contrived NBA Cup? Or, maybe, has cord-cutting caught up with the league’s reliance on cable? That explanation would make the most sense, and would also explain why Amazon Prime aced out Warner Bros. Discovery in the most recent round of TV negotiations – which, incidentally, resulted in contracts that secured the league $77 billion over the next 11 years. The advice from here? Be calm. The audience will be there, and interest will pick up after, um, football season. … • This item tumbled into the inbox recently: A team of orthopedic surgeons at the Baylor University College of Medicine determined that astronauts who have been in spaceflight are at greater risk for shoulder injuries than the normal population, particularly rotator cuff tears, and the longer they’re exposed to that microgravity the greater the jeopardy. And we thought pitching was a risky endeavor. [email protected]