A Case For Bowl Contraction

Well, here we are with another bowl season upon us, the supposed "postseason" of college football. But I'm not as interested in this bowl season as I have been in the past. Why? Mainly two reasons: the BCS still sucks (even worse than before) and over-saturation of the market.

I'm always a guy who likes to look at history, so I thought I'd go back to my favorite era of college football, the 1980s. The 1980 season, to be precise. I looked at how many teams there were, how many bowls there were, and what the records of the teams playing in the bowls were. Plus, I looked at how many "bowl-eligible" teams, by today's standards, there were that didn't make it to a postseason game. Then I compared it to this season. My, how much the landscape has changed in 30 years.

Back then, there were 91 Division 1-A schools and 15 bowl games. However, there were only 29 slots as the Independence Bowl pitted the 1-AA Southland Conference winner against an at-large 1-A school. That year, McNeese State played Southern Mississippi and lost 16-14 (but I digress). That works out to roughly a third of D-1 programs getting to a bowl game. Of those 29 bowl teams, only five had seven wins or less, or 17 percent of those playing. Three teams with seven wins did not make bowl games, and five six-win teams were left out of postseason competition. On a side note, half the Pac-10 was on probation, so three teams that were ineligible could have been selected ahead of some of the other schools with less wins, most notably UCLA (9-2) and USC (8-3).

Undefeated Georgia ended up winning the national championship that year by virtue of a win over 9-1-1 Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. As with any year, there was some controversy as to who should play the Bulldogs for the title. Four other teams had one loss, but no ties: Pittsburgh, North Carolina, and Baylor were all 10-1, and BYU was 11-1. Some fans thought Notre Dame's prestige and tradition landed them in that game and would have preferred to see Pitt play Georgia. But it probably wouldn't have mattered, as Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker and his mates were practically unstoppable that year. Again, I digress.

The point is that the bowl landscape was so much simpler 30 years ago. The teams that deserved to get in, got in. Those that didn't, didn't. There were no sixth-place teams in their conference going to a bowl game. Rarely did a six-win team go to a bowl, and the seasons were shorter, so it was tougher to get six or seven wins. And,the bowls actually had names back then. It was the Cotton Bowl and the Gator Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. Now we have bowls that don't even have a name, just the sponsor's, i.e. the Champs Sports Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl and the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl. Not only that, but some of the sponsorships change so frequently that it's hard to keep track.

So, since I've already started addressing the present, let's look at the statistics. There are 119 D-1 schools and 35 bowl games. That means that 59 percent of them get to the postseason. That would be like the NFL expanding its playoffs to 18 teams. We're already in jeopardy of having a playoff team with a losing record (NFC West champ), but could you imagine of you piled on six more teams in the playoffs? It would be ridiculous, which is what I think of the current bowl landscape. Of the 70 teams that go to bowls, 32 of them have seven wins or less. That's 46 percent of postseason teams having a .500 or barely better record. And I didn't even figure out how many of those teams had losing records in their conference. At a glance, some of them could only muster three wins in an eight- or nine-game conference schedule. Yet they're considered bowl-worthy. It's out of hand.

I mean, really. Look at some of these matchups. Now, I mean no disrespect to the schools or their supporters, but most of these bowls don't intrigue me at all, and I consider myself a pretty diehard college football fan. Does anybody really care about the New Orleans Bowl played on Saturday between Troy and Ohio? Might as well rename it the "Nobody is Watching Bowl." What about Toledo and Florida International in the aforementioned Little Caesar's Bowl? I can guarantee my DVR won't be set to record that one. Even some of the pairings between larger schools don't raise the hair on the back of my neck. Does anyone outside of Seattle really think that the Washington Huskies stand a chance against Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl, or Arizona against Oklahoma State in the Alamo Bowl? And what about some of the teams that barely made the cut going against each other? BYU and UTEP, both 6-6, in the New Mexico Bowl, or SMU (7-6) against Army (6-6) aren't much more compelling than a regular season game.

Now I know that the bowls are all about the money. That's why there are big corporate sponsors and so freaking many of them. But here's the deal. Cut back on the number of bowl games, and add a playoff system. A playoff could generate just as much, if not more, money as does the current system, especially if it was integrated into the bowls. I've written about this before, so I won't waste space recounting it here, but it could work.

I read an article this week where Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is pitching a playoff system that he would finance personally, and it's actually getting some attention. Whatever the case, a playoff is the only way to go to determine a real national champion. I think this year's BCS outlook is good — the two best teams got in with Oregon and Auburn, and TCU might have something to say if they beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, but this year it worked, at least at the top.

"What do you mean, at the top?" you might ask. Well, I seem to have a beef with the BCS almost every year, and this year is no exception. The problem lies with the automatic qualifier clause. God bless Connecticut for making a BCS bowl game, but do they really deserve to be there? The last time I checked, the BCS bowls were made for the top-ranked teams in the BCS. Let's see where UConn stacks up. Hold on here ... let me look again. Hmmm ... I can't seem to find them in the ... oh, that's right. They're not ranked in the BCS, not even in the top 25! What's up with that?

I don't consider myself a Boise State apologist, although I guess I do my fair share of arguing their case when they're being considered for championship contention, but I think they got completely hosed by the BCS this year, thanks to the automatic qualifier. Boise State should be in a BCS bowl, but because mediocre UConn won the Big East, they get a BCS game. Yet they're 8-4 compared to BSU's 11-1 and not even listed in the BCS rankings. Again, no disrespect to Connecticut and their season, but surely there's a better way to allow the teams that are actually in the upper part of the BCS standings to actually play in a BCS bowl. As far as Michigan State is concerned, which is 9th in the BCS and a spot ahead of Boise State, I agree with the policy of not having more than two schools from the same conference in the BCS games. That makes sense, but keeping out a team that has fared far better than one that got in is ludicrous.

Don't get me wrong, though. I don't think this bowl season is a total disaster. I'm actually looking forward to all the BCS bowls and a few others, like Alabama and Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl, but most of these matchups are *yawn* making me pine for the good old days. Oh, and one final thing, since I have two local schools playing for national championships this year with Eastern Washington in the 1-AA title game and Oregon in the BCS championship, I'll sign off by yelling, "GO EAGLES and GO DUCKS!"