Why do courts in SEC country bother scheduling anything on January 2nd?
Look, every year, an SEC team is going to play in a New Year’s Day bowl game. Now that we have the College Football Playoff, we can be pretty sure that, every year, at least one SEC team (maybe four given how up the SEC’s ass the selection committee is) will be playing in a bowl game that doubles as a national championship semi-final.
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Therefore, every single freaking year, Southerners with means will attempt to travel to a sporting event, at night, on January 1st. They will not be back in court on the morning of January 2nd.
So why schedule a hearing? Why schedule a conference? The lucky fans will use all of their powers and skills to get the 1/2 appointment moved if they can score tickets on 1/1. And, realistically, nobody watching at home wants to go to work on 1/2 either.
The SEC should just declare January 2nd “Robert E. Lee” Day and be freaking done with it (wait, they already have that day, God I hate the South). Also, the Monday after the Super Bowl should be a federal holiday: we could call it “National Brain Trauma Awareness Day” as an attempt to atone for the sins of our pastime.
Bottom line, pretending January 2nd is a regular work day in the South leads to this kind of story, pretty much every year. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
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When Patrick Connell’s brother told him they were going to cheer on their beloved Georgia Bulldogs in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, the Savannah attorney realized he had a conflict in court.
Connell was due in Judge Michael Karpf’s courtroom to argue a bench trial on Jan. 2, the day he was scheduled to fly back from Pasadena. He couldn’t possibly make it in time, so the devoted Dawg had to file an emergency motion to postpone the trial.
The motion was granted, as well it should have been. As Connell explained in his filing:
“It is truly great to be a Georgia Bulldawg, and to have a loving and generous older brother who has given me the opportunity to watch the Dawgs take on the Sooners in the most famous stadium in the land on New Year’s Day, at what will hopefully be the last stop before we play for, and win, a national championship,” Connell wrote in the motion.
The AJC has the whole motion and it’s pretty compelling.
Depending on where you live, depending on where you were born, you might not understand this whole “college football” thing. Joe and I tried to explain it in this podcast — with lawyer cum college football writer cum Bloomin’ Onion Ryan Nanni — but you are not required to understand it. You just need to know that for some people college football is more important to them than ANYTHING is to you. In the SEC, it’s all some people have. No self-respecting fan of an SEC team would choose court over the Rose Bowl, you have to use brute force to pull them away from the game.
So let’s just acknowledge it. Make January 2nd a Southern Holiday. And maybe an Upper Midwestern holiday (“More People Than Cows Day”). And be done with it. Give these people something nice. I swear if Donald Trump wasn’t just CONNING the people who voted for him, this would be a thing already.
Georgia judge postpones trial so lawyer can see Bulldogs in Rose Bowl [Atlanta Journal Constitution]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.