NCAA applying the brakes to new bowl games for 3 years is a start
The NCAA says no more new college football bowls for at least three years, but will they whittle down the bowls in place now?
The NCAA has started to process of culling by putting a moratorium on new college football bowls, but some serious work needs to be done in examining which current bowls are essential (and profitable) and which simply exist as a means of creating a broader stream of advertising revenue.
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There are too many college football bowl games. Even for the most dedicated fan of the game, watching some of these so-called bowl games is about as entertaining as watching mosquitoes fly into a bug-zapper for three solid hours.
Okay, I exaggerate. The bug-zapper is infinitely more entertaining than San Jose State and Georgia State in the AutoNation Cure Bowl.
But the NCAA has at least taken step one on the way to curing the college bowl pandemic in banning any new bowl games from being formed for the next three years. So Austin, Myrtle Beach and Charleston will have to wait until after the 2019 season before they can gain the certification for bowls they were seeking.
This ruling comes after a season in which three teams with 5-7 records were given entrance into postseason play because there weren’t enough
winning
non-losing teams to fill all the slots in the available bowl games.
Something about horses and barn doors leaps to mind here.
So once again the NCAA falls short of fixing the actual problem and just applies a feel-good Powerpuff Girls band-aid to the gushing wound. We’ll at least give some credit t0 the council for recognizing something is wrong, and that’s a start.
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The first step in recovery is recognizing you have a problem. Now who has the 12-step guide for bowl game addiction?
According to ESPN, the council will continue to “study the postseason issue” and evaluate bowl-eligibility criteria, as well as determining whether the minimum requirement of a “deserving” bowl team is a winning record or finishing .500.
I know we try to make all these teams feel loved and special, but is there really a question as to whether or not a .500 record is truly “deserving” of a postseason reward?
Let’s stop spreading the warm fuzzies, do away with the everyone gets a trophy mentality, and reward only the teams who truly have accomplished something. Sitting at 6-6 when at least two of those wins came against teams who probably would be given a tough game by the local girls lacrosse team is no accomplishment.
When 80 out of 128 teams can be invited to play in bowl games, you’re completely minimizing the honor of being “bowl eligible”, and when teams with losing records in Power-5 conferences receive those bids it destroys the meaning behind fighting to play in a bowl game at all.
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Halting new bowl games from being formed is a start. Let’s all hope that “studying the postseason issue” will include deciding to give the axe to a few of them as well.