🏈 No such thing as too many bowl games

[BAMANEWSBOT]

You say we don't need any more bowl games? You say three more is three too many?

You say we already had too many, and adding bowls in Austin, Orlando and Tucson to bring the total to 42 postseason games - playoff included - is just the latest sign of our everyone-gets-a-trophy culture?

Tell that to J.J. Nelson and Kennard Backman.

Tell it to Bill Clark.

Tell it to any player, coach or staff member of the 2014 UAB football team, which could be the last football team in UAB history.

That team could've made history, could've been the second UAB team ever to play in a bowl game, could've and should've been rewarded for putting together the school's best season in a decade.

Instead the Blazers got shut out of the postseason and the program got shut down.

You think those players and coaches wouldn't have enjoyed a bowl trip? You think, under normal circumstances, the university wouldn't have benefited from a 3 ½-hour TV commercial?

Ask Joey Jones and South Alabama what it meant for the 6-6 Jaguars to play Bowling Green in the inaugural Raycom Media Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, the first bowl game in USA history. The Jags didn't win the game, but they won in so many other ways.

Even Power 5 Conference teams can get a boost by breaking even and reaching the postseason. Look at last season's Texas Bowl where 6-6 Arkansas met 6-6 Texas.

A cynic might've looked at that game as an insult, the next step in turning college football into T-ball, with juice boxes all around. In truth, it was an appetizing meeting between two former Southwest Conference rivals on the rebound, two tradition-rich programs under relatively new head coaches in need of a sign that better days were ahead.

That 31-7 Arkansas victory has a lot to do with the optimism surrounding a program that won exactly two SEC games last season. Bret Bielema has been to multiple Rose Bowls, but none of them may have meant more to his Wisconsin program at the time than that Texas Bowl did to the Hogs.

We already know the arguments against this bowl boom. None of them holds up in the court of public opinion.

If many of these bowl games came to life as nothing more than programming for ESPN, so what? You got something against watching football on TV in December? If you do, I hear TBS and TNT may show "A Christmas Story" a time or two.

If many of these matchups include teams that finished 6-6 or 7-5, big deal. For some programs, that's a major accomplishment. Not everyone can be Alabama.

If you're concerned about the decline and fall of Western civilization because college football is rewarding mediocrity instead of excellence, hey, that's why they now have a playoff.

College football is a big tent with plenty of room for the Sugar Bowl and the Birmingham Bowl. Nick Saban and his 2014 Alabama team earned their trip to New Orleans. It would've been just as gratifying to see Clark and his 2014 UAB team travel across town one more time to Legion Field.

Continue reading...

 

[TerryP]

Color me shocked Scab mentions UAintBama.

Say what you want about a 6-6 team making a bowl game. I think that needs to be raised to at least seven wins on the season.

Say what you want about finances for collegiate programs. These smaller schools are losing A LOT of money as it is...and now they're suggesting adding even more.

There IS a problem with a team having a losing record and getting a bowl invitation. But then again, we do live in the "everyone gets a trophy generation."

 

[planomateo]

Just another way for a bowl committee to rake in some money is how I see it. Everyone else is making money except the schools and based on the numbers I've seen on budgets in the red/black, can't afford to lose the money.

 

[bama alum]

Color me shocked Scab mentions UAintBama.

Say what you want about a 6-6 team making a bowl game. I think that needs to be raised to at least seven wins on the season.

Say what you want about finances for collegiate programs. These smaller schools are losing A LOT of money as it is...and now they're suggesting adding even more.

There IS a problem with a team having a losing record and getting a bowl invitation. But then again, we do live in the "everyone gets a trophy generation."

 

[psychojoe]

Why not just have everyone play a post season game. :sarc:

The old idea of bowls being a reward for a good season has certainly flown out the window. This idea is like rewarding little Johnny because he made all Cs on his report card.

 

[PhillyGirl]

Everyone gets a trophy! :five:

:bandhead:

 

[sean]

when i was young, i played little league baseball. i was never the best player or even on the best team. and we ALL understood that if we didn't win, we didn't get a trophy. we didn't whine or cry complain if we didn't get a trophy. we just knew that we needed to try harder the next season to win one. it sucked, but we knew why we didn't win a trophy and knew what we needed to do to win one.

when i was in junior high and high school, i was in the band. we went to a bunch of competitions. we didn't always win, so we didn't always get a trophy. they gave out trophies for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. everyone else? thanks for coming, we'll see y'all next year. we knew that if we didn't win or at least get 2nd or 3rd place then we didn't get a trophy. we all just knew that we needed to practice harder and longer for the next competition.

fast-forward......a few (maybe more, shut up) years later and now it seems as though they want to give college teams.....COLLEGE TEAMS.....a reward for having a mediocre season. and that's exactly what a 6-6 record is , mediocre.

i am in COMPLETE agreement that you need to be at LEAST 7-5 before you even get CONSIDERED for a bowl game.

i swear, it seems as though they want to have enough bowl games so all 127 teams get to go to a bowl game so no one gets left out and little, 18-22-year-old johnny doesn't get his feelings hurt.

what happened to UAB sucks. it really does. and i hate if for those guys that played their asses off each day in practice and who went through all those 2-a-days then put it all on the field on those saturdays. BUT.....that doesn't mean they deserve to go to a bowl game if they really didn't earn it.

 

[We All Bleed Crimson]

If you don't have more wins than losses, you stay home and watch a game between two winning teams.
There are so many bowls now, I probably don't watch any of about half of them.
The way it used to be, and I believe should still be, is that bowl games were a reward for a good season, a winning season, a job-well-done.
Things are so PC now that everyone wants a participation trophy.... ahh, that's another debate that needs to happen.
Anyway, the main thing that keeps some of these bowls alive is TV money - and you have to wonder how long a sponsor is going to pour money into a bowl that regularly features a 6-6 team vs another 6-6 team.... wow, mediocracy at its finest... yawn.