To Money-Grubbing College Bowl Organizers: Call Off the Dogs Before You Ruin the Game
Years ago going to a bowl game after regular season play was a huge reward and a sign of excellence. Now it has become an absolute joke.
What has caused this sad state of affairs? I'm glad you asked. The answer is money-grubbing bowl game organizers with dollar signs in their eyes. It is all about making money at the expense of respect for the game, the players, and their quest for excellence.
You see there are only 120 major college football teams in Division 1-A, what the NCAA loves to call FBS (the Football Bowl Subdivision). The NCAA brain trust loves more and more bowl games because they believe it promotes the sport, and becomes a money magnet.
It also is killing the sport like a wounded animal running for its life after being shot by a sportsman, not realizing that even if it escapes its hunter, it will bleed to death in the process.
The plethora of bowl games will eventually cause football to loose its appeal as the number one spectator sport in America. That may sound unthinkable, but I have been covering or watching football for a half century, and can see history repeating itself.
I can remember when baseball was king in America, and the powers to be thought it would never stop being THE sport of choice. Then basketball became real popular with rivalries at the pro level. Then football became all the rage. I can remember when pro football games were not even televised due to a lack of demand. When you live long enough and pay attention, you see the cycles developing.
Pro baseball made the mistake of expanding to more and more teams, and more and more playoff games. Pretty soon the quality of play was diminished, too much money was involved, and the game became driven more by money than the quest for excellence
Baseball club owners put crummy teams on the field and people stopped coming. Some major cities would not even support a lousy team. Another sport then became more popular.
Here is the rub: We have 120 major teams and now the bowl season has been expanded to 35 games. That means 70 of the 120 teams will play in a bowl game. The situation has become so dire that the NCAA is talking about waivers because not enough teams currently qualify to play in a bowl game.
The standard today is 6 wins among 12 games - that's just a stinking.500 record which doesn't really merit the reward of a bowl game. Heck, you used to have to win 7 games to make it into a bowl game. Now there is talk of letting teams with a 5-7 record play in a bowl game because not enough may qualify with 6 wins.
This is nonsense. One pernicious result of this is rewarding incompetency.
It reminds me of parents who all but force their kid to play little league baseball when the kid could care less. He then plays 12 games on a team that loses every game and, as a reward, they give every kid on the team a trophy so their feelings are not hurt by their incompetence.
Parents also feel compelled to have photos taken of their little "stars" and have them put on baseball cards like they are some kind of big league player. How stupid. The kid learns that being a zero counts for everything. He feels like a nothing and is a nothing.
He is denied the blood, sweat and tears of working his butt off to actually develop skills, learn to become a team player, and enjoy some actual, real life success - a far more valuable lesson that will help him throughout his life.
Last year, 71 teams became bowl-eligible by winning at least 6 games, and 68 of them played in bowl games. This year, 64 teams are bowl eligible and 20 may be if they win again. Bowl selections are to be announced on Sunday, Dec. 5.
Unless someone with authority puts their foot down, we may soon see 60 bowl games with every major school participating. That may make someone a lot money, but the games will be terrible and the players will be cheated out of something very important - the feeling of success that comes from hard work and sacrifice, and cannot be replaced.