College football fans may get stuffed by more than just their holiday dinner this year.
An unprecedented 40 bowls will be played, and the NCAA made sure that no bowl-eligible Football Subdivision teams will be left out again.
No, literally.
Every bowl eligible team has been picked. In fact, three normally-ineligible 5-7 teams will be going bowling. The NCAA finally overstretched itself with their bowl system, and viewers may not be able to ingest anymore games.
Their process for filling any vacancies is, to say the least, controversial. They use the school’s Academic Progress Rate, and the schools with the highest rate get first crack at a bowl. Academics allegedly come first with these major programs so it makes sense to reward those with the highest APR, though some argue it is unfair to pick a team based off what happens off the field.
Perhaps the NCCA thought they would never face a scenario where there weren’t enough teams to fill a bowl — there are always more bowl-eligible teams than spots available after all.
But since bowls make money — The NCAA, conferences and schools attending all profit from bowls — they made more. Even when money was lost, like with Middle Tennessee State’s bowl trip cost the Sun Belt conference $50,000 in 2010, it has been rationalized that the exposure will balance things out.
The NCAA is milking that cash cow, resulting in an expansion of bowl games. In 1995 there were only 18 bowls; in 2005, there were 25. Now it is 40.
Regardless if Georgia State, Kansas State South Alabama — the only 5-6 teams in action on Saturday — had won, the 5-7 Missouri Tigers would’ve been in a bowl because of its APR.
Missouri still said no to a bowl.
The MU student in me was disappointed by the season, and would rather have seen coach Gary Pinkel get carried off the field on his players’ shoulders into retirement after a bowl win, not on a cold, rainy Columbia, Missouri night after a 19-8 loss to Tennessee.
But the realist in me knows there is no way Missouri should be in a bowl.
If they had accepted, viewers would be watching an offense that reached the end zone only three times since the first weekend in October. Freshman punter Corey Fatony was the star of its offense.
Instead, Nebraska, Minnesota and San Jose State will be the 5-7 teams playing in a bowl.
Is this what bowl games have come to?
Not only are teams being rewarded for having a losing record, but we, the audience, get to watch the mediocrity. We get it, people love football, and bowl games are a nice way for teams like Georgia State to play on the national stage.
On top of it, so many teams are eligible that one game — the Arizona Bowl — will feature foes in the same conference, Colorado State and Nevada from the Mountain West. MWC commissioner Craig Thompson called the system “broken” in a press release Sunday.
Broken is probably the best way to describe things.
Losing is now rewarded with a post-season birth, a payout and the opportunity to market shirts that have “AutoNation Cure Bowl” on them.
It’s all about that bottom line, which is the reason this system is not going away anytime soon. People keep watching.
Even though CBSsports reported that attendance in returning bowls declined for the fourth straight year in 2014 and was the lowest attendance average in 36 years, and that 60 percent of bowls reported a decline in attendance from 2013, people still tuned in. The average bowl drew roughly six million viewers, according to Ticketcity, with a median viewer total of about four million. No bowl had less than 1.1 million viewers.
I’m just as guilty as anyone of contributing to those ratings. Watching subpar teams and playing Bowl Mania on ESPN are two of my favorite holiday past-times. But even a bowl-lover like myself knows this has gone too far.
How can schools justify to their fans that they’re rewarding themselves for an average, or even losing season? Then again, why justify anything when you turn a profit.
Missouri may have been foolish for declining a chance to take its donors and alumni to a likely-warm weather destination at the start of the winter, missing extra practice time and for passing the on monetary opportunity. Or maybe it is their way of telling players and fans alike that they will not reward mediocrity; a similar gesture was made by Notre Dame in 2009 after it finished 6-6.
Perhaps that is the only solution: schools and viewers saying enough is enough.
No more rewards for disappointing season. No more being just good enough to qualify as a standard.
It’s an unlikely scenario. The donors love the money, and apparently three straight opportunities to put a “BBVA Compass Bowl champions” trophy in their display case (that is one bowl Pitt fans probably never want to hear about again). Conference commissioners love the television money, and both sponsors and ESPN loves the viewers, even if it means doing away with the classic bowl names — Penn State playing in the TaxSlayer Bowl doesn’t seem to have the same ring to it as playing in the Gator Bowl, its former name.
But love them or hate them, the bowls are here to stay for foreseeable future.
Better clear out the closet to make room for your school’s annual bowl game clothing.
