Bowling For Morons, Part 2: The Who-Cares.com Bowl
I'll bet you didn't know this, but we have arrived at the most tedious point of the college football season, the bowl season. It's easy to forget about the start of the bowl season; after all, there are so many of them now, and all have interchangeable or forgettable names and they match up two equally interchangeable or forgettable teams with 7-4 records to play for the right to say they won an extra game this season. And of course, it's all about money.
The bowl season kicked off Tuesday with the inaugural New Orleans Bowl, pitting the champion of the Sun Belt Conference (is that even Division I-A?) against some Big 12 or Mountain West or WAC also-ran. See how easy it is to get confused? Anyway, apparently nobody in town even knew it was happening, because only 18,000 people showed up for the affair, and one of the teams didn't even have a winning record! Next year, if this keeps up, Susquehanna may be playing in a bowl game.
The next night, we were treated to the GMAC Bowl, which used to be the Mobile, Alabama Bowl, but unfortunately Mobile can't spend the big bucks on naming rights like the good people at GMAC can. East Carolina and Marshall slugged it out for 4 1/2 hours, through two overtimes, before Marshall emerged victorious, 64-61. Most people saw the result and thought it was a basketball result. "And why the hell are they playing in Mobile? Some kind of Christmas tournament?" Marshall came back from down 30 to win the game, don't know why I bother with the details, because nobody cares.
And that is the point of all of this. NOBODY CARES ABOUT BOWLS ANYMORE!!! Not since the BCS rendered all bowl games but one (or two this year) irrelevant. And especially not since we hit bowl game overload in the past few years. We now get treated to a smorgasboard of Oahu Bowls and Silicon Valley Bowls, and my god, there's even one in Seattle! They DO know it usually rains there this time of year, right? And then there's the mother of all abortion bowls, the Humanitarian Bowl. This game is played every year in (get this) BOISE, IDAHO! Why, you may ask? Because the National Humanitarian Hall of Fame or something like that is in Boise, which is remarkable, because the only thing I thought was in Boise, Idaho was a bunch of Idahodians. Can you imagine being the team that won its way into THIS spectacle?:
Players: "Yeah, we made a bowl game, where are we going? Florida? Arizona? California?"
Coach: "Nope, you're going to Boise, Idaho."
Players: "Is it too late to cancel?"
Here's how messed up Boise is: they can't even get the color of their FIELD right!!! IT'S BLUE!!! YES, IT'S A BLUE TURF FIELD!!!
Meanwhile, the other big problem is the glut of advertisers that put there names before the bowl, or worse yet, ON the bowl. It used to be we had the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl; hell, for a few years, we even had such wonderful yearly events as the Garden State Bowl, Cherry Bowl, and even the Bluebonnet Bowl. Recently, corporations started attaching their names to the games, like the FedEx Orange Bowl or the Mobil Cotton Bowl or the OS/2-turned-Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Then, they decided that just wasn't good enough, so voila, you have the Blockbuster Bowl!!! Then, Huizenga dropped his sponsorship, and it became the Carquest Bowl. Then, Carquest dropped their sponsorship, and it's now the MicronPC.com Bowl, or something like that. It's easy to get confused, there are so many of these .com bowls, it's ridiculous. We have the Insight.com Bowl, where Syracuse is playing this year, and so help me god, the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl. Then again, anything's better than the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl. Or not.
What you end up with all of these games is a watered-down pool or games that nobody watches outside of the fans of the two teams involved, and sometimes even that's not a sure thing. The attendance is small at these games, one has to wonder how they even make a profit. But sure enough, there they are, matching up the 4th place team from the Big East with the 6th place team from the SEC or something like that. Once again, I say, let's go back to the old days. 12-15 bowl games, all of them by invite-only (conference finish means nothing unless you win it, then it's a sure thing). Maybe then, people will consider making a bowl game an accomplishment again, as opposed to now, where a 6-5 record gets you in.
And finally, on an unrelated but football note, I need to say something about the aftermath of the Cleveland Browns riot last Sunday. I saw the whole thing play out live on my TV screen and I hadn't been more shocked or flabbergasted by what I was watching since I saw the World Trade Center collapse on September 11th (and that's not humor, I'm being serious). However, I knew what was going to happen in the hours and days following this incident, and it did. An endless parade of talking heads and holier-than-thou sportswriters all looked down their collective noses at the beer-swilling masses who root for the orange and brown and went on and on about how improper this all was. And they trashed Browns owner Al Lerner and GM Carmen Policy for having the gall to make excuses for the behavior, saying they were freezing and loyal to their team, and hell, at least nobody got killed, right?
Well, I do have a problem with fans who take their frustrations out in the form of projectile throwing that doesn't involve pre-mounted targets and a license to conceal and carry. However, I also have a problem with writers and commentators who see these things and suddenly feel qualified to speak about the human condition, or in this case the drunken human condition. Speaking for the great unwashed, I say the following: WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!!! They were pissed, and people do dumb things while fueled by emotion and more than a few brewskies. Doesn't make it right, but at the same time, it doesn't condemn the citizens of Cleveland to a lifetime of ridicule and second-class citizenship. Besides, setting the river on fire a couple decades back already clinched THAT deal for them. Two perfect examples of why I'm right on this: 1) The other night on Monday Night Football, as the Saints fans did their best impression of Browns fans, Al Michaels ridiculed the fans for their behavior and "everyman" Dennis Miller took my side on all of this. 2) An ESPN.com poll asking people who made the biggest ass out of themselves last week showed that more than twice as many people thought kicker Bill Gramatica of Arizona, who blew out his knee jumping up and down to celebrate a made field goal, was more of an ass than the Browns fans. I do believe the American people have spoken.
The bowl season kicked off Tuesday with the inaugural New Orleans Bowl, pitting the champion of the Sun Belt Conference (is that even Division I-A?) against some Big 12 or Mountain West or WAC also-ran. See how easy it is to get confused? Anyway, apparently nobody in town even knew it was happening, because only 18,000 people showed up for the affair, and one of the teams didn't even have a winning record! Next year, if this keeps up, Susquehanna may be playing in a bowl game.
The next night, we were treated to the GMAC Bowl, which used to be the Mobile, Alabama Bowl, but unfortunately Mobile can't spend the big bucks on naming rights like the good people at GMAC can. East Carolina and Marshall slugged it out for 4 1/2 hours, through two overtimes, before Marshall emerged victorious, 64-61. Most people saw the result and thought it was a basketball result. "And why the hell are they playing in Mobile? Some kind of Christmas tournament?" Marshall came back from down 30 to win the game, don't know why I bother with the details, because nobody cares.
And that is the point of all of this. NOBODY CARES ABOUT BOWLS ANYMORE!!! Not since the BCS rendered all bowl games but one (or two this year) irrelevant. And especially not since we hit bowl game overload in the past few years. We now get treated to a smorgasboard of Oahu Bowls and Silicon Valley Bowls, and my god, there's even one in Seattle! They DO know it usually rains there this time of year, right? And then there's the mother of all abortion bowls, the Humanitarian Bowl. This game is played every year in (get this) BOISE, IDAHO! Why, you may ask? Because the National Humanitarian Hall of Fame or something like that is in Boise, which is remarkable, because the only thing I thought was in Boise, Idaho was a bunch of Idahodians. Can you imagine being the team that won its way into THIS spectacle?:
Players: "Yeah, we made a bowl game, where are we going? Florida? Arizona? California?"
Coach: "Nope, you're going to Boise, Idaho."
Players: "Is it too late to cancel?"
Here's how messed up Boise is: they can't even get the color of their FIELD right!!! IT'S BLUE!!! YES, IT'S A BLUE TURF FIELD!!!
Meanwhile, the other big problem is the glut of advertisers that put there names before the bowl, or worse yet, ON the bowl. It used to be we had the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl; hell, for a few years, we even had such wonderful yearly events as the Garden State Bowl, Cherry Bowl, and even the Bluebonnet Bowl. Recently, corporations started attaching their names to the games, like the FedEx Orange Bowl or the Mobil Cotton Bowl or the OS/2-turned-Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Then, they decided that just wasn't good enough, so voila, you have the Blockbuster Bowl!!! Then, Huizenga dropped his sponsorship, and it became the Carquest Bowl. Then, Carquest dropped their sponsorship, and it's now the MicronPC.com Bowl, or something like that. It's easy to get confused, there are so many of these .com bowls, it's ridiculous. We have the Insight.com Bowl, where Syracuse is playing this year, and so help me god, the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl. Then again, anything's better than the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl. Or not.
What you end up with all of these games is a watered-down pool or games that nobody watches outside of the fans of the two teams involved, and sometimes even that's not a sure thing. The attendance is small at these games, one has to wonder how they even make a profit. But sure enough, there they are, matching up the 4th place team from the Big East with the 6th place team from the SEC or something like that. Once again, I say, let's go back to the old days. 12-15 bowl games, all of them by invite-only (conference finish means nothing unless you win it, then it's a sure thing). Maybe then, people will consider making a bowl game an accomplishment again, as opposed to now, where a 6-5 record gets you in.
And finally, on an unrelated but football note, I need to say something about the aftermath of the Cleveland Browns riot last Sunday. I saw the whole thing play out live on my TV screen and I hadn't been more shocked or flabbergasted by what I was watching since I saw the World Trade Center collapse on September 11th (and that's not humor, I'm being serious). However, I knew what was going to happen in the hours and days following this incident, and it did. An endless parade of talking heads and holier-than-thou sportswriters all looked down their collective noses at the beer-swilling masses who root for the orange and brown and went on and on about how improper this all was. And they trashed Browns owner Al Lerner and GM Carmen Policy for having the gall to make excuses for the behavior, saying they were freezing and loyal to their team, and hell, at least nobody got killed, right?
Well, I do have a problem with fans who take their frustrations out in the form of projectile throwing that doesn't involve pre-mounted targets and a license to conceal and carry. However, I also have a problem with writers and commentators who see these things and suddenly feel qualified to speak about the human condition, or in this case the drunken human condition. Speaking for the great unwashed, I say the following: WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!!! They were pissed, and people do dumb things while fueled by emotion and more than a few brewskies. Doesn't make it right, but at the same time, it doesn't condemn the citizens of Cleveland to a lifetime of ridicule and second-class citizenship. Besides, setting the river on fire a couple decades back already clinched THAT deal for them. Two perfect examples of why I'm right on this: 1) The other night on Monday Night Football, as the Saints fans did their best impression of Browns fans, Al Michaels ridiculed the fans for their behavior and "everyman" Dennis Miller took my side on all of this. 2) An ESPN.com poll asking people who made the biggest ass out of themselves last week showed that more than twice as many people thought kicker Bill Gramatica of Arizona, who blew out his knee jumping up and down to celebrate a made field goal, was more of an ass than the Browns fans. I do believe the American people have spoken.
Labels: football
posted by Dave | 11:37 PM
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