Bowled Over
This isn't going to be the first time I've made this rant, but it bears repeating, because absolutely nothing has changed in the 5 years since I last said this... and by that I am of course referring to this column. We once again have a matchup for college football's national championship game that a good chunk of the country didn't want, and once again it's preceded by WAY too many meaningless bowl games that were only created to give companies a chance to plug something.
It wasn't always like this... in 1970, Wake Forest won its last ACC title prior to this season... and they DIDN'T get invited to a bowl game. This year, the 7TH and 8TH place teams in the ACC got bowl bids. Teams actually used to decline bowl bids if they felt it wasn't proper or respectful; most notably Army, which turned down an invite to the Sugar Bowl during the Vietnam War. Today, you'd be crazy to turn down a bowl invite, because there's lots of money involved... either that or you would've had to be involved in a bench-clearing melee like South Carolina and Clemson were two years back. Then again, Miami's still going bowling after their national disgrace of a fight, so I guess that's out too. During the "golden age" of Syracuse football, from roughly 1952-1970, the Orange posted 16 winning seasons, including 1 11-win year (the '59 national championship) and 10 other years when they went 7-3 or better (the season was shorter back then, often just 9-10 games). Of those 11 great teams... 7 went to bowl games. The 1960 Orange followed their national title with a 7-2 season... NO bowl. Today, even a .500 record gets you in a bowl game.
When you think about great postseason college football games, names like the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Cotton Bowl come to mind. Oh sure, there were a few clunkers... like the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Garden State Bowl (a bowl game in December in New Jersey?), and the Cherry Bowl (a bowl game in December in Detroit? I don't care if it WAS indoors...) But at least that was the fault of whomever named the game, not some corporate sponsor. About 20 years ago, corporations started putting their names on the games, so you had the USF&G Sugar Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, and the Mobil Cotton Bowl. I remember joking about 10 years ago that they should just do away with the real bowl name and just name it after the corporation. Apparently someone thought this wasn't a joke... and now you have the Champs Sports Bowl, the Meineke Bowl, and the GMAC Bowl. Some companies even replaced longtime traditional bowl names with their own... hence, the Peach Bowl is now the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the Hall of Fame Bowl is now the Outback Bowl, and the Florida Citrus (nee Tangerine) Bowl is now the Capital One Bowl. Some of these names don't even make sense. For example, why play the Papa John's Bowl in Birmingham, when the company is located in Louisville? The Armed Forces Bowl... played in Fort Worth, Texas, nowhere near any of the service academies, and none of the service academies are playing in this game.
And so, you're going to have a ridiculous 32 bowl games going on, starting tomorrow night with the Poinsettia Bowl... talk about your poisonous television (ba dum bum). And between then and New Year's Eve, you'll see clashes of the titans such as Troy State vs. Rice in the New Orleans Bowl (because having the Sugar Bowl just isn't enough for Nawlins), Central Michigan vs. Middle Tennessee State in the Motor City Bowl (again, a bowl game in December in Detroit?), and my favorite of all, those head-stompin' Hurricanes playing Nevada in the MPC Computers Bowl... in Boise, Idaho... a bowl game in December in IDAHO... and they play this one OUTDOORS. They even created bowl games for no apparent reason other than to give a team another home game... for example, New Mexico vs. San Jose State in the, ahem, New Mexico Bowl... and Hawaii vs. Arizona State in the (surprise) Hawaii Bowl. And then, after the actually relevant games on New Year's Day, and the first couple of BCS games... they throw 2 more meaningless games at you before the BCS National Championship. Tell me, after I just got done watching top 10 teams like USC and Michigan slug it out, why would I want to watch the GMAC Bowl between Southern Mississippi and Ohio (not Ohio State, Ohio U.)? Oh, and then there's the International Bowl in Toronto... the only way I would watch that is if they made the two schools play by Canadian rules.
Then, FINALLY, we get the national championship game: Unbeaten Ohio State and their Heisman-winning QB Troy Smith, taking on once-beaten Florida, SEC champs... except a lot of people think it should be a rematch of Ohio State and Michigan, which the Buckeyes won in a shootout back in November to win the Big Ten championship. Sorry folks, but you're WRONG... Michigan being in the championship game would be WRONG. You don't reward a team with a shot at a national championship if it A) didn't win its conference title, and B) LOST its last game. Take a lesson from 2001 when the computers decided Nebraska, who got throttled 62-20 in their regular season finale and didn't even make the Big 12 title game, was worthy of a shot at a national title. Nebraska then got clobbered by Miami, and poor Frank Solich was out of a job 2 years later.
This was the best possible matchup, and if we're gonna play it this way, then that's what you want. Now I know people are screaming about a playoff, and ya know what, there is absolutely ZERO reason not to have a playoff system. Coaches go screaming one minute about their kids not having time to focus on classes if they're playing playoff games, but then they rave about how going to a bowl game after a 6-6 season will help their team because of the extra practice time. The Big Giant Heads at the BCS (a little "3rd Rock" reference) say that now that they play a 12-game season, it makes even a 16-team playoff impossible. Ya know, I had no problem with the season being 11 games... but of course the big schools wanted a 12th game so they could get a 7th home game and make more money. That's what it all comes down to... money. As long as everyone's pockets are sufficiently lined, this mess will go on. As long as Fox is paying top dollar to carry the BCS games, there will be no playoff system. As long as universities salivate over even a $300,000 payout for the lowest-tier bowl game, there will be no playoff system.
Of course, when I first wrote about this 5 years ago, I had a solution that was even more absurd, because once you get the bowl genie out of the bottle, it's kinda hard to stuff him back in. I said that we should go back to what we had 20 years ago... just a dozen or so bowl games. If you don't finish in the top half of your conference, no bowl game for you. If you don't even show up in the "Others Receiving Votes" category in the national polls, no bowl game for you. Considering we live in a nation of ever-lowering standards, is it any wonder that we have the mess we're in now?
It wasn't always like this... in 1970, Wake Forest won its last ACC title prior to this season... and they DIDN'T get invited to a bowl game. This year, the 7TH and 8TH place teams in the ACC got bowl bids. Teams actually used to decline bowl bids if they felt it wasn't proper or respectful; most notably Army, which turned down an invite to the Sugar Bowl during the Vietnam War. Today, you'd be crazy to turn down a bowl invite, because there's lots of money involved... either that or you would've had to be involved in a bench-clearing melee like South Carolina and Clemson were two years back. Then again, Miami's still going bowling after their national disgrace of a fight, so I guess that's out too. During the "golden age" of Syracuse football, from roughly 1952-1970, the Orange posted 16 winning seasons, including 1 11-win year (the '59 national championship) and 10 other years when they went 7-3 or better (the season was shorter back then, often just 9-10 games). Of those 11 great teams... 7 went to bowl games. The 1960 Orange followed their national title with a 7-2 season... NO bowl. Today, even a .500 record gets you in a bowl game.
When you think about great postseason college football games, names like the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Cotton Bowl come to mind. Oh sure, there were a few clunkers... like the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Garden State Bowl (a bowl game in December in New Jersey?), and the Cherry Bowl (a bowl game in December in Detroit? I don't care if it WAS indoors...) But at least that was the fault of whomever named the game, not some corporate sponsor. About 20 years ago, corporations started putting their names on the games, so you had the USF&G Sugar Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, and the Mobil Cotton Bowl. I remember joking about 10 years ago that they should just do away with the real bowl name and just name it after the corporation. Apparently someone thought this wasn't a joke... and now you have the Champs Sports Bowl, the Meineke Bowl, and the GMAC Bowl. Some companies even replaced longtime traditional bowl names with their own... hence, the Peach Bowl is now the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the Hall of Fame Bowl is now the Outback Bowl, and the Florida Citrus (nee Tangerine) Bowl is now the Capital One Bowl. Some of these names don't even make sense. For example, why play the Papa John's Bowl in Birmingham, when the company is located in Louisville? The Armed Forces Bowl... played in Fort Worth, Texas, nowhere near any of the service academies, and none of the service academies are playing in this game.
And so, you're going to have a ridiculous 32 bowl games going on, starting tomorrow night with the Poinsettia Bowl... talk about your poisonous television (ba dum bum). And between then and New Year's Eve, you'll see clashes of the titans such as Troy State vs. Rice in the New Orleans Bowl (because having the Sugar Bowl just isn't enough for Nawlins), Central Michigan vs. Middle Tennessee State in the Motor City Bowl (again, a bowl game in December in Detroit?), and my favorite of all, those head-stompin' Hurricanes playing Nevada in the MPC Computers Bowl... in Boise, Idaho... a bowl game in December in IDAHO... and they play this one OUTDOORS. They even created bowl games for no apparent reason other than to give a team another home game... for example, New Mexico vs. San Jose State in the, ahem, New Mexico Bowl... and Hawaii vs. Arizona State in the (surprise) Hawaii Bowl. And then, after the actually relevant games on New Year's Day, and the first couple of BCS games... they throw 2 more meaningless games at you before the BCS National Championship. Tell me, after I just got done watching top 10 teams like USC and Michigan slug it out, why would I want to watch the GMAC Bowl between Southern Mississippi and Ohio (not Ohio State, Ohio U.)? Oh, and then there's the International Bowl in Toronto... the only way I would watch that is if they made the two schools play by Canadian rules.
Then, FINALLY, we get the national championship game: Unbeaten Ohio State and their Heisman-winning QB Troy Smith, taking on once-beaten Florida, SEC champs... except a lot of people think it should be a rematch of Ohio State and Michigan, which the Buckeyes won in a shootout back in November to win the Big Ten championship. Sorry folks, but you're WRONG... Michigan being in the championship game would be WRONG. You don't reward a team with a shot at a national championship if it A) didn't win its conference title, and B) LOST its last game. Take a lesson from 2001 when the computers decided Nebraska, who got throttled 62-20 in their regular season finale and didn't even make the Big 12 title game, was worthy of a shot at a national title. Nebraska then got clobbered by Miami, and poor Frank Solich was out of a job 2 years later.
This was the best possible matchup, and if we're gonna play it this way, then that's what you want. Now I know people are screaming about a playoff, and ya know what, there is absolutely ZERO reason not to have a playoff system. Coaches go screaming one minute about their kids not having time to focus on classes if they're playing playoff games, but then they rave about how going to a bowl game after a 6-6 season will help their team because of the extra practice time. The Big Giant Heads at the BCS (a little "3rd Rock" reference) say that now that they play a 12-game season, it makes even a 16-team playoff impossible. Ya know, I had no problem with the season being 11 games... but of course the big schools wanted a 12th game so they could get a 7th home game and make more money. That's what it all comes down to... money. As long as everyone's pockets are sufficiently lined, this mess will go on. As long as Fox is paying top dollar to carry the BCS games, there will be no playoff system. As long as universities salivate over even a $300,000 payout for the lowest-tier bowl game, there will be no playoff system.
Of course, when I first wrote about this 5 years ago, I had a solution that was even more absurd, because once you get the bowl genie out of the bottle, it's kinda hard to stuff him back in. I said that we should go back to what we had 20 years ago... just a dozen or so bowl games. If you don't finish in the top half of your conference, no bowl game for you. If you don't even show up in the "Others Receiving Votes" category in the national polls, no bowl game for you. Considering we live in a nation of ever-lowering standards, is it any wonder that we have the mess we're in now?
Labels: bowls, college football, overkill
posted by Dave | 7:50 PM
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