For the first time in several years, I did something uncharacteristic on New Year’s Day.

Last New Year’s, I went over to a friend’s house. The year before that I was in Belize, so I went to a bar. The year before that I was in my hometown, and went to the local hotel/bar lobby.

But this year, I stayed at homew and I didn’t watch a single football game. Not what you were expecting?

You see, New Year’s Day is simply one of the best days of the year for college football fans. The whole day is filled with some of the best games that sport will have on display, and if you have the WatchESPN App, you can pull up multiple games at once for the early ones.

Yet, at this point, with six games having been played, I can only tell you one result, and that’s only because I have a lot of LSU Tiger football fans on my Facebook news feed (though very few of them if any actually went to the trouble of going to school there).

I only watched one game out of the four that were playing on New Years Eve, too — Duke vs. Texas A&M, and that one felt like watching two people playing the EA Sports video game.

My family had driven up for a few days to celebrate the holidays with me, and somehow I was able to keep the majority of the games off. Maybe it was because of all of the travel.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to Norfolk to eat some Hibachi and visit the Total Wine store to do our shopping for the night ahead. We also visited the mall, and toured around some to get to know the area better. I hadn’t yet explored Norfolk all that much. I didn’t even realize it had a mall, though it was a nice one.

We came back to Franklin, had a few drinks and watched a few movies on Netflix. And I, like the pathetically addicted creature I am, watched the Duke/Texas A&M game on my phone.

On New Year’s Day, I did some furniture shopping, as my parents had brought up all of my books, so I found myself in need of a bookcase, and I figured it was also time to get something to put my T-shirt collection in.

There was no drama. No one consumed too much alcohol, and we didn’t have hangovers.

On Wednesday, they drove back to Natchez, leaving at 11 a.m., and they didn’t get home until about 8 a.m. (Eastern) on Thursday — a grand total of 21 hours. It usually takes me about 16 hours without much speeding. I can’t say they made great time, but they were driving with my 2-year-old nephew, Jacob, so I guess a toddler adds five hours.

Still, it was a lot, considering my mother drove the whole route. Next year, I promised to try my best to fly down for the holiday season, or at least drive if I can’t fly. Though I didn’t promise to not watch any college football games.