SCOTT JACOBS

If you can believe it, we’re now half way to the end of bowl season.  Half way folks!

With 34 bowl games, 68 bowl teams, and other random warm and cold weather cities lining up each and every year your guess is as good as mine when it will end.  If my interview with the EagleBank Bowl back in the fall was any indication, bowl games aren’t so much about wins and losses as they are with tourism, charities, and rewarding teams with another game (because everyone likes an extra game).

The bowl field, once a prestigious one, is now such a long list that it takes time and dedication just to slug through it.  Bowl games, once strictly played at warm weather sites, like the first Rose Bowl game played in 1916 and always played on New Years Day are becoming few and far between.  There is no consistency with the bowl schedule.  It’s become a free for all, and thus every year the date of bowl games seem to– and do change.

But how did this happen?  When did the sacred bowl system become a mediocrity plate shoved down our throat?  How I ask, how!

In 1930 the Rose Bowl was the only major college bowl game played.  With its success came other warm weather New Year’s day bowls like the Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Sun Bowl. By 1940 there were five major bowl games.  In 1950 three more were added.  A decade later there will 11 bowl games on the docket.  In 1980, 19.  In 1990, the number was 25.  And from there bowl games sprouted up seemingly overnight.

Now we have 34 games, 68 teams, and most traditions have been shot dead.  Sponsors have deals with just about every bowl, and games are played from sea to shining sea and even… Canada.  There’s the International Bowl, the Humanitarian Bowl, the Texas Bowl, the PapaJohns.com bowl, heck now there’s a St. Petersburg bowl.

The dates have been rendered meaningless. 6-6 Kentucky plays East Carolina on January 2nd at 5pm.  Three hours later two top 10 teams play in the old tried and true Sugar Bowl.  On January 3rd the International Bowl in Toronto serves as a prelude to the Fiesta Bowl two days later.  On January 6th the all important GMAC Bowl gets its time in the spotlight, before they play the BCS National title game the two days later.

Really?

There are almost as many bowls that have been discontinued, 32 as are played.

Listen to some of these names: Cherry Bowl, Gotham Bowl, Galleryfurniture.com Bowl, and my favorite, the Oil Bowl.

And the beat goes on.

It seems like college football’s grandest time has become dictated by a globe.  Remember when Eddie Murphy in Coming to America spins a globe and it lands on New York.  Is that what bowl games do today?

Spin.
Hey what’d we land on?
Um, Tampa.
Okay, let’s give ‘em a game!
How about one more?
Yeah, couldn’t hurt.
What’d we land on this time?
Let’s see, Washington, D.C.
Cool!

Maybe next year it will land on Green Bay.  Then we can play the Frosted Flakes FrostBite Bowl.  I’m sure fans will flock to that one!

O joy.  O joy.

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