With college football’s bowl season underway (seriously, no joking), it’s another holiday season of what ifs, including this one: what if we had a system that actually made sense!

SCOTT JACOBS

College football’s annual mediocrity-fest (ahem, bowl season) started this past Saturday.

What’s that? You were too busy doing something productive with your life?  I for one, was working.  The last few years I’ve actually felt something towards this idiotic, completely outdated joke of a system, because of my participation in a tournament that awarded one point for each bowl game you picked correctly. All bowls being equal in the system, each game felt like the National Championship to me.

But this year I’m missing out on the fun, frolicking competition of getting wrapped up in schools I know little to nothing about and bowls I really couldn’t care two licks about, in exchange for, well, doing something better with my time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll watch some bowls, and very likely I’ll get sucked into some of them too.  But with not a care in the world towards either side in the majority of these ho-hum matchups, I’ll probably be sitting a good portion of this bowl season out.

I missed three bowl games already.

Can you name ‘em?  One second, let me go look them up.  Aha, found it.  Thanks ESPN! (Well, then again you’re kinda the reason we have this bowl bonanza every year instead of real matchups that people actually want to see, but I digress).

Anyways, BYU beat UTEP in the New Mexico Bowl (Quick, raise your hand if you can name two players from this game.  Anybody?  Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?)

Then Northern Illinois smacked around Fresno State in the UDrove to that game because bowl. I mean, the Humanitarian Bowl.  Fun fact, the Huskies (of NIU) won their school record 11th game, but yeah, you were probably too busy partaking in the UHad Something better to do with your life bowl. Presented by … (C’mon people, we didn’t get a sponsor for this thing? Jeez, this is embarrassing.  Moving on…)

In the R + L Carry you to a bowl victory that means nothing because no one watched the game, Troy whooped Ohio by 27.

Your bowl rundown ladies and gentleman.

It’s funny. Nothing around the watercooler about any of these games.  Why, because no one but these small schools care.  But the money tree keeps pulling in, and bringing Christmas (ahem, holiday) cheer to all their schools and to all conferences involved a good night.

Folks, we’re three games into that unstoppable mediocrity freight train from hell that is the bowl season.  That means that 32 bowl games have yet to be played. 32!  Which really means that aside from 4 of the 5 BCS games, a handful of New Year’s Day games, and another small chunk of the bowl games before that, we’re stuck with a whole lot of football that means a whole lot of nothing.

Bowl games are about pride.
I get that.  But how much pride can you really take if you win the Beef O Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl? Yeah I’m talking to you Big East member, Louisville.  I’m not sure what’s more amazing: That the Cardinals have fell all the way to the “See you at Beef’s Bowl” or that they were in the 2007 Orange Bowl as the 6th (yeah 6th!) ranked team in the country?  O wait, that wasn’t supposed to have a question mark. They’re equally amazing.

Bowl games are about tradition.
I get that too.  But what kind of tradition allows a game to be moved around every single year to the point where you need a TomTom to find it on the bowl schedule. I remember the days when you’d wake up on New Year’s Day to the Cotton Bowl. This year it’s nearly a week after the start of the New Year.  More confusing is how it can somehow play at night on the network that just lost the rights to the BCS (FOX) and on top of that, play in between the Sugar Bowl and National Championship Game.

Bowl games are about conference affiliations.
Because nothing screams college football like the TicketCity.com Bowl.  When the Cotton Bowl left for Jerry Jones’ shiny new palace, the actual stadium immediately looked for a new bowl to host. And it was granted. So now, we have the Cotton Bowl played a week into January, and the imposter bowl that took it’s place simply giving us an even less relevent bowl game played on New Year’s Day.  How highly thought of is the TicketPity Bowl?  Despite getting a New Year’s Day slot, it managed to land on ESPNU.  Then again so did UConn’s women’s team 87 straight wins into their remarkable, but completely disregarded streak.

How bad has it gotten?

When the Sun Bowl found out they could pair a mediocre, disappointing Miami team that just fired it’s head coach versus an even less spectacular, barely as relevent Notre Dame team, the Chairman of the Sun Bowl said the following, and I quote:

“We never in our wildest dreams in 77 years of bowl business thought we’d have a matchup like that,” Sun Bowl chairman John Folmer said. “This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to our community.”

The Sun Bowl has been around for over 70 years. But boy you would never know it.

That pretty much sums up the bowl season in my opinion.

Mediocrity is awarded, and if you can find a matchup of sexy teams who no longer have any actual star appeal, well who cares. Congratulations Sun Bowl, you sold out your game. The fastest sellout in the history of the El Paso bowl.

But if that’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to your community?  Well, shucks, I just feel sorry for you.

And college football fans, for being stuck with a crappy system that has no fix in sight.  As long as the money keeps pouring in, the system ain’t changing.

But there is good news.

They’re running out of bowl games to create.  Afterall, they’ve just about maxed out the number of bowl eligible teams there are.  With apologies to a handful of those leftout this year (namely Temple) just about everyone else will get their fix this college football season of some kind of bowl.

Photo: AP

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