To the money-hoarding organizers of the College Football Bowl: Call the dogs before you ruin the game
Years ago, going to a bowl game after playing the regular season was a great 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-seeking bowling alley organizers with dollar signs in their eyes. It’s about making money at the expense of respect for the game, the players, and their pursuit of excellence.
You see, there are only 120 major college football teams in Division 1-A, which the NCAA loves to call FBS (the Football Bowl Subdivision). The NCAA brain trust loves bowling games more and more because they believe it promotes the sport and becomes a money magnet.
He’s also killing the sport like a wounded animal running for its life after being shot by a jock, not realizing that even if he escapes his hunter, he’ll bleed to death in the process.
The plethora of bowling games will eventually cause soccer to lose its appeal as the number one spectator sport in America. That may seem unthinkable, but I’ve been covering or watching football for half a century and I can see history repeating itself.
I can remember when baseball was king in America, and the powers to think that it would never stop being THE sport of choice. Basketball then became very popular with rivalries at the professional level. Then soccer became fashionable. I can remember when professional football games weren’t even televised due to lack of demand. When you live long enough and pay attention, you see the cycles unfold.
Professional baseball made the mistake of expanding to more and more teams and more and more playoff games. Very soon, the quality of the game declined, too much money was involved, and the game became driven more by money than the pursuit of excellence.
Baseball club owners put shoddy equipment on the field and people stopped coming. Some major cities wouldn’t even support a lousy team. Another sport later became more popular.
Here’s the problem: 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 gotten so dire that the NCAA is talking about waivers because there are currently not enough teams qualified to play in a bowl game.
The standard nowadays is 6 wins out of 12 games, that’s just a stinking .500 record that really isn’t worth the reward of a game of bowling. Heck, you used to have to win 7 games to make it a bowling game. Now there is talk of letting teams with a 5-7 record play in a bowl game because there aren’t enough that can qualify with 6 wins.
This makes no sense. One pernicious result of this is rewarding incompetence.
It reminds me of parents almost forcing their child to play minor league baseball when the child doesn’t give a damn. Then he plays 12 games on a team that loses every game, and as a reward, each kid on the team is given a trophy so his feelings won’t get hurt by his incompetence.
Parents also feel compelled to take pictures of their little “stars” and put them on baseball cards as if they were some kind of big league player. How stupid. The child learns that being a zero counts for everything. He feels like nothing and is nothing.
You are denied the blood, sweat, and tears of working hard to develop skills, learning how to become a team player, and enjoying real success in real life, a much more valuable lesson that will help you throughout your 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 eligible for the bowl and 20 may be if they win again. Bowl selections will be announced on Sunday, December 5.
Unless someone in authority puts their foot down, we may soon see 60 bowl games with every major school participating. That can make someone a lot of money, but the games will be terrible, and players will be cheated out of something very important: the feeling of success that comes from hard work and sacrifice, and cannot be replaced.
Copyright © 2010 Ed Bagley