Too much supply, not enough demand for most bowl games
Enough is enough and too much is too much.
I would rather watch a high school football game than a pro or college game. I would rather watch a college game than a pro game, but only if the game counts. The college bowl games don’t count. I will watch more pro playoff games than I did college bowl games and there were 34 bowl games.
It bothers me that colleges are supposed to be institutions of higher education and they have not figured out that their bowl season is for the most part a waste of time. The NCAA has over saturated the air waves with too many meaningless bowl games. The names of the games say it all: The Greed .com Toilet Bowl Game, the Have You Even Heard About Either of These Two Teams Bowl and the Who Cares Bowl.
Sixty-eight out of 129 teams get invited to bowl games. They should have a playoff between the 51 teams that don’t get invited. The loser keeps on playing until we find out who the Detroit Lions are of college football.
High school has playoffs. The pros have a playoff. The colleges have meaningless bowl games.
Even the “top” bowl games, the BCS big five bowl games, don’t have much meaning or at least they don’t prove anything.
When the winning coaches of the BCS bowl games say that they would rather be in a playoff, somebody should listen.
The bowls are about making money. Some of them are not doing that. The Orange Bowl, a big five bowl, had to sell some of its seats for $1 and they couldn’t sell those ducats. It cost more to print the tickets. Ramona freshmen games cost more. Only 57,851 of the 76,500 tickets available were sold.
Only 25,205 fans attended the St. Petersburg Bowl Game. I thought that St. Petersburg was in Russia. The game should have been played there. Memphis could only find 2,000 fans willing to buy tickets. They were allotted 10,000 tickets.
When fans from the schools playing don’t think that the game is important, maybe it isn’t. More people went to Graceland that day than went to the game. South Florida, which was the home team, couldn’t even sell 10,000 tickets.
Don’t blame it on the economy. Blame it on supply and demand. There is too much supply and not much demand for most of the bowl games. When basketball games and outdoor hockey games get more fans than a bowl game, maybe it really isn’t a bowl game.
Cut the regular season back and have a real playoff. Have a 32-team playoff. Do away with the conference championship games. The top two teams would have to play 15 games. High school teams do that in some states. Why can’t college student/athletes?
College basketball makes big money on playoffs. College baseball makes money on playoffs. Since it is all about money real money can be made. Six and six teams should not go to bowl games. How many real fans can’t name half of the bowl games? How many sportscasters, sportswriters or college presidents can name half of the bowl games? I can’t. Can you. Do you want to?
Some purist will say that there would be too much class time missed. Wake up, Little Eva. Check out the graduation rates of the teams that were in the bowl games. Listen to the interviews after the games. When a player thinks that the N on the Nebraska helmet stands for knowledge (thanks Chuck), the players aren’t going to class and if they are they aren’t learning much. When more players go to class than fans show up for the game, the game is moot.
We know who won the CIF championship games. We will know who will win the Super Bowl. We will never know who the NCAA champions were. Colleges are supposed to be places where one can find answers. The NCAA is not even looking for the answer.