DAILY DIRT: These new American heroes are not wearing shoulder pads

Daily Dirt for Monday, Jan. 20, 2025

There’s something more important going on at the Rose Bowl these days than a football game … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 1,180 of The Daily Dirt.

1. The Rose Bowl, one of the nation’s most iconic football sites, is hosting heroes of a different kind these days.

That famous stadium in Pasadena, Calif., which earlier this month hosted the Ohio State-Oregon College Football Playoff game, has been converted into a staging area and is housing 4,000 first responders who are helping battle the widespread fires in the southern area of the state.

I have gleaned bits of information from The Los Angeles Times and other media outlets in that region. Here’s a sampling: “This is probably not the most iconic event that we’ve ever hosted. But it could be the most important,” said Jens Weiden, the Rose Bowl’s chief executive.
Overnight, the stadium and surrounding parking lots were converted into a small city. There are massive trailers with private sleeping quarters, portable shower facilities, a laundry, a medical facility, a physical therapy trailer and two kitchens serving thousands of meals a day. There’s an area to fuel and repair fire trucks, a peer counseling center, a McDonald’s, a coffee kiosk, even a place to send and pick up mail.

And everything is free.

Just a few days ago, the tents lined up in the shadow of the stadium were surrounded by a colorful collection of red, green and yellow fire trucks and water tankers from more than a dozen states and Canada. Twice a day, dozens of those trucks line up in front of sand-colored Humvees and police cruisers and snake out of the parking lots as another line of vehicles returns, marking the end of one 12-hour shift and the start of another.

“It catches your throat,” said Brian Brantley, the vice president for advancement for the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, who lives in a house that looks down on the stadium. “All these people coming here to work together to fight this thing.”

Just a mile away from the Rose Bowl there are sites with houses burned to the ground. But those involved will fight on, until this horrible situation is under control and the rebuilding can begin. Until that time, it’s people like Bobby Childs, a security guard at the Rose Bowl, who is one of those people who continue the fight. Childs’ wife died in September and his nearby home is now nothing but ashes, yet he is there helping as best he can.

“Wake me up. Pinch me. Just a nightmare,” Childs said.

And unfortunately, that nightmare appears to be far from over.

2. Did you know (Part 252)

That according to retiredinusa.com the most popular hobbies for seniors are yoga, travel and learning how to play an instrument. My responses, in order, would be: Not gonna happen, only if going to Walmart counts as travel and are you kidding me? 

That Monday night’s College Football Playoff championship game could bring in historic viewing numbers, projected to be somewhere north of 30 million. The last time the two megapowers met in 2023 the game was the most watched college football contest in 30 years.

That next year the Fiesta and Peach bowls will host the CFP semifinals. The Rose and Orange bowls were this year’s host sites.

That “Frasier” has been canceled by Paramount+ after two seasons, but is being shopped around for other streamers to potentially pick it up for a third season.

That “Avatar” (2009), remains the highest-grossing movie of all time, earning $2.9 billion worldwide.

3. How many of you have been told by a boss to “think outside the box?”

When I saw the following one-liner I immediately thought of about a half-dozen former editors:

“At my boss’s funeral, I’m going to kneel down to the casket and whisper, ‘Who’s thinking outside the box now, Frank?'”

Steve Thought O’ The Day — The average smart phone has more bacteria on its screen than a toilet seat. Have a good day.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. How are golf and pickleball not listed highly on the retiree hobby list?