Now that the college football regular season is over we now move on to the college football bowl games. We have some great non-CFP match-ups like Michigan vs. Florida in the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl, Ohio State vs. Notre Dame in the BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl, and Stanford vs. Iowa in “The Grandaddy of Them All” the Rose Bowl. Then there’s the College Football Playoffs, which include Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, and Oklahoma. And finally, we have the bowl games where you say to yourself “This is a bowl game?”
I mean no disrespect to the athletes of the Universities or their coaches, but a team that is barely even .500 does not deserve a bowl game. A bowl game is supposed to be something special and something that is highly regarded. Now it’s only a marketing machine designed to make money. It’s gotten to the point where they are willing to give 5-7 teams a bowl game in order to fill up all of slots. Let that sink in for a second, a 5-7 team is being given a bowl game. It’s gotten to the point where these bowl games have become participation trophies.
Just to bring things down for you, there are 128 schools in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). There are a total of 40 bowl games altogether. So out of 128 schools, 80 make a bowl game in one way or another. That’s more than half the schools in Division I making a bowl game. That’s ridiculous. But in the end, it’s all about money.
The difference between college basketball’s March Madness and college football’s Bowl Season is college basketball is giving the small schools a shot at glory and winning the biggest prize in all of college basketball. College football is giving the small schools these little irrelevant bowls that barely anybody will be watching. And when the game is over, it will be forgotten about and barely discussed.
I don’t blame the athletes or the coaches for this problem; they are just capitalizing on a lucky situation. I blame the NCAA. They are the ones that force all of these bowl games down our throats just so they can have a fatter wallet. I don’t mind the big time bowls with the big time teams facing off because they actually deserve to be where they are. But the fact that 5-7 teams get a bowl game is absolutely ludicrous. Most people do not care about these meaningless bowl games, and they will prove it when the ratings come out.
