Bowls are still duping us

by jtlight on Dec 7, 2007 12:11 PM PST in Oregon Ducks Football

Well, it's bowl season. The most overhyped time of the year, where college football fans are treated to a slate of exhibition games that, in the grand scheme of things, have no meaning. This year is worst than most. Take a look at the bowl schedule. Wow. Just utter crap. There are almost no interesting games until January 1st, and most of the games on that day are going to suck also.

If there's anything this season has taught us, it's that this system we have (in its current form) is ridiculous. There is no point to all this. These are exhibition games where student-athletes play to increase the coffers of the university. Really, think about that. Does that make any sense? Yet we continue to support this garbage.

Dwight Jaynes had a great article on this today. College football fans in general are suckers for putting up with this. What do we get out of this system? We are the ones that put money into it. We are the ones that keep it going. And we get nothing in return.

There was a time when bowls were important. When college football was more regional, they were a reward for a truly special season. No longer. The system has been entirely bastardized. Even those bowls that used to be important to cities have now changed to be not be about college football, or tradition, but about money. A perfect example is the former Peach Bowl, which is now the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. Now, I have no problem with making money. What I do have a problem with is putting my money towards a system that provides me no benefit. If bowls have no respect for the past, why should we?

In a lot of cases, change is not made under the guise of "tradition." But for almost all bowls, tradition went out the window long ago in the name of the almighty dollar. I know a lot of Pac-10 fans love the Rose Bowl. I am not one of those fans. The Rose Bowl only means that you won the conference. That is where the importance lies, not in playing in Pasadena. The Rose Bowl is just a stadium and a game. To me, playing in the Rose Bowl (or even Fiesta in 2001) meant that Oregon won the conference. But right now, the Rose Bowl just wants a Big 10 and a Pac 10 team, and its stupid parade. As long as this crap is profitable, it will never change. (It's important to note that the Pac 10 and the Big 10 are the two conferences that are stopping gradual change that is desperately needed.)

And it's not like college football hasn't moved forward in other areas. College football overtime was adopted; an extra game was added. This was in the face of tradition. For traditionalists, it makes meaningless many new records that are made with longer games (when they go to OT) and more games in a season. But honestly, does anyone care about these things? Of course not. The vast majority of fans embrace this because it makes the games so much more exciting. Can you imagine a college football overtime game where the winner played another game and the loser's season was over? Why did college football make these other changes, but refuses to change the bowl system? Because college football fans make bowl games so profitable, the powers that be cannot turn their back on that money.

College football fans are completely and totally screwed by the bowl system. There is no other way to put it. But remember, we hold the power. We hold the money, and we willingly give it over for a completely inferior product. The only way change will happen is if college football fans stop supporting this. College football is about entertainment and about bettering the student-athletes. The postseason of college football needs to change to better accommodate both of these things.

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Agree

If we had even an eight team playoff bracket, the resulting 7 games would be huge. Ratings for the first round of games would dwarf any other bowl game this year (except possibly for the BCS Championship game). College football is great, but you're right about the bowl selections this year.

Is there a playoff solution out there that would make up for the cash involved in the current bowl system?

by engeljd on Dec 7, 2007 1:02 PM PST reply actions

I Disagree

To me, bowl games are fun. It's a chance to see teams play that normally would not play and especially now in light of most better teams playing tomato cans in non conference games.

It's the BCS and conferences that bastardize the bowls. If the bowls were 100% open, realizing some of the better bowls will always have regional teams to some degree, the better teams would line up for the better bowls and the lesser teams for whatever they can get.

The BCS games are usually a joke as they are handcuffed to inviting from a short list of teams. A playoff would make it worse as any bowl not part of the "playoff" would become even more worthless.

Now, I do agree there are too many bowls, but again- allowing a completely open bowl scenario allows for some potentially interesting match-ups.

For example- take Hawaii. Not really a top 20 team. In fact, a 5-7 loss team if they played in a major conference. The fact they are taking up a BCS slot makes me ill. If they played in the Honolulu Bowl (or whatever it's called) they could draw a pretty good team to go to Hawaii for Christmas and play the only undefeated team. Then, rather than 5,000 to watch the game, it'd be a sell out and a hell of a lot more fun.

No, I love bowl games. It's just the current system that's killed them.

by BLAZER PROPHET on Dec 7, 2007 7:33 PM PST reply actions

Pac Ten Commish is the suck

Seriously, Tom Hanson is the worst sports commisioner in the land. Gary Bettman thinks he couldn't find his a$s with both hands. He is the NUMBER ONE reason the pac ten, and therefore the rest of college football, will have no playoff forthe foreseeable future.
Dude is a major league jack-off.

by Duck2112 on Dec 7, 2007 9:47 PM PST reply actions

Playoff

If I were to have a playoff (which I do not favor), here is how I would do it.

We have just under 120 division A teams. I would align them into 12 conferences of 10 teams each. Every team would play everyother team in their conference. So that's 9 games.
Go back to an 11 game schedule and each team has 2 non conference games of their choosing.
With NO exceptions, the 12 conference champs fall into a playoff. I would add 6 teams at large based on overall record and a purely computerized strength of schedule coefficient. That gives us 16 teams.
With 16 teams, we have a simple playoff that starts the last weekend in November. Teams that lose early can play in a non playoff bowl game if invited. Other non playoff teams are eligible as well.
The playoff games are played every other week and a champ is crowned the first week of january.

by BLAZER PROPHET on Dec 8, 2007 7:42 AM PST up reply actions