Did you know this? Did you hear this? It is an outrage: There are so many college bowl games now (41 of them) that the NCAA had to change its rules to allow teams with losing records to play in them. From the organization’s press release:
The NCAA Division I Council on Monday approved a one-time process in which the Division I Football Oversight Committee will identify 5-7 teams with the highest Academic Progress Rates to bring the total of eligible bowl teams to 80 or 81.
Teams that finished with five wins are needed to fill additional bowl slots this year.
What kind of garbage is that? Playing a bowl game is a reward, and rewards are for winners, not for losers.
(I think there are only 80 teams required despite there being 41 games because two teams—the ones that end up in the College Football Playoff final—will technically play two bowl games each.)
Bowl games, as it happens, are also generally total legal boondoggles run by “nonprofits” that lavish absurdly large salaries and extravagant perks on administrators whose job is to organize a single game every year.
This is how bowls should work. The Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and the Orange Bowl should be played on New Year’s Day. Apart from that there should be a 6-team playoff played at the actual home stadiums of the teams involved (what a novel idea!) except for the championship game, which would also be played at the Rose Bowl. This final game should take place no later than a week after New Year’s. Enough with stretching the damn season halfway to February. And there should be no other bowl games besides the ones I named.
Hmmph. Get off my lawn.
