Disappointing college bowl season proof the system needs more tweaking

The 2015-16 college bowl season has come to an end, and looking back it’s painfully apparent that there is more work to be done to make this better.

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Hey, for the average college football fan, 41 bowls is wing-and-pizza nirvana. Joe Couch Potato is trolling through the Elysium of malt, hops and flatscreens and still wanting more. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for the game, and especially not the way things have been set up.

2014 was the first year of the College Football Playoff, so everyone was forgiving (for the most part) of any hiccups or oddities which may have occurred. It takes a few years to get a system like this working properly, and it was better than the BCS.

In year two, we watched the playoff rankings unfold with a more discerning eye, and all the talk was about who would be in the final four and what the playoff matchups would be…but what people (myself included) forgot to be a little more critical of was the schedule which would follow once those teams were chosen.

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The playoffs are a great idea, and they’re working. But this whole New Year’s Six thing? Yeah…about that.

With 40 bowls (41 if you include the HBCU Celebration bowl), television schedules were being pushed to the limit, and the caliber of teams joining those bowls began to see some downward slope. And yes, I know the three 5-7 teams all won their hollow bowl games this season.

But the worst thing? The fact that the two more important games of the season – the national semifinal playoff games – were being played on New Year’s Eve, and that six essentially meaningless bowls and three bowls which are supposed to have some prestige were being played after those two all-important national semifinals.

That’s like your waiter bringing you the juicy filet mignon with all the trimmings, and then dropping off your soup and salad along with the check.

Look, I get it. More bowls = more money…for the schools, for the NCAA, for basically everyone except the players. The corporate sponsors line up to slap their name on a trophy, the chambers of commerce can’t wait to push how great their cities are, and the travel industry gets a boon from rabid alumni with more time and money than good sense.

Yay for our amateur feeder league….but, I digress.

But the bowl season has become watered down, bloated, and stretches too far over the holiday season. The  good ol’ days of conference affiliation, tradition and a New Year’s bowl marathon are over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go out with a bang.

If the Peach, Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Sugar and Rose Bowls are supposed to be the crème de la crème of the bowl season, then doesn’t it make sense that those bowls would be how we end things? Why would these games be stuck in the middle of a mixed bag of who’s-your-sponsor-this-year bowls? And limiting who the New Year’s Six bowls have to choose for participants is proving to be disastrous.

Look at our New Year’s Six scores from this season:

Orange: No. 1 Clemson 37, No. 4 Oklahoma 17
Cotton: No. 2 Alabama 38, No. 3 Michigan State 0
Peach: Houston 38, Florida State 24
Fiesta: Ohio State 44, Notre Dame 28
Rose: Stanford 45, Iowa 16
Sugar: Ole Miss 48, Oklahoma State 20

Granted, the two playoff games were strictly in the hands of the committee, but the only competitive game was the Peach Bowl, and it wasn’t even interesting enough to hold the attention of most Florida State fans.

The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl had grown into one of the most exciting and successful bowls in the country. It was SEC pitted against regional rival ACC teams and sold out every season. This year, despite an “announced attendance” of 71,000 it was clear there were a lot of Lennay Kekua‘s relatives in the building.

It’s time to trim the fat from the bowl season, and make being “bowl eligible” and getting a bowl bid become meaningful again. As for the New Year’s Six…other than the two playoff games, which are to be determined by the CFB Playoff selection committee, the four remaining bowls shouldn’t be locked into having to choose from the Top 10 only. They should be free to choose the best matchups for their bowls and provide some better games for the fans.

In other words, if you aren’t part of the final four in the playoffs, there should be no guarantees as to your bowl destination.

Bowl attendance has seen a steady decline over the past few seasons. Even the most loyal and affluent of fans aren’t willing to travel cross-country to see a 5-7 team in a bowl whose name has changed four times in the last six years (we still love you Nebraska). The NCAA and the conferences need to come to a meeting of the minds and rein in some of this bowl madness.

Let’s make seven wins the benchmark for being bowl eligible. Schools whose teams play .500 (or below) ball in a 12-game season shouldn’t be rewarded. And cut the bowls back to 30 at maximum. 60 teams out of 128 is plenty to make the postseason (even the NBA limits postseason participants to 53 percent of the league).

More saturday blitz: 10 Biggest Disappointments of 2015 CFB Season

And for goodness sake, schedule the two playoff games (taking a deep breath…)

Last.

Make the semifinals exactly what they are supposed to be…penultimate, not bunched in the middle with the rest of the also-rans.

Look, it’s never going to be perfect…but we can still make it better.