Years ago going to a bowl game soon after normal season play was a huge reward and a sign of excellence. Now it has grow to be an absolute joke.
What has caused doofootball of affairs? I am glad you asked. The answer is funds-grubbing bowl game organizers with dollar indicators in their eyes. It is all about producing income at the expense of respect for the game, the players, and their quest for excellence.
You see there are only 120 major college football teams in Division 1-A, what the NCAA loves to contact FBS (the Football Bowl Subdivision). The NCAA brain trust loves much more and much more bowl games mainly because they think it promotes the sport, and becomes a dollars magnet.
It also is killing the sport like a wounded animal running for its life following being shot by a sportsman, not realizing that even if it escapes its hunter, it will bleed to death in the course of action.
The plethora of bowl games will sooner or later result in football to loose its appeal as the quantity 1 spectator sport in America. That may perhaps sound unthinkable, but I have been covering or watching football for a half century, and can see history repeating itself.
I can remember when baseball was king in America, and the powers to be thought it would in no way quit becoming THE sport of selection. Then basketball became true preferred with rivalries at the pro level. Then football became all the rage. I can bear in mind when pro football games were not even televised due to a lack of demand. When you live extended sufficient and pay focus, you see the cycles building.
Pro baseball created the error of expanding to additional and far more teams, and additional and additional playoff games. Quite soon the quality of play was diminished, too considerably income was involved, and the game became driven much more by funds than the quest for excellence.
Baseball club owners place crummy teams on the field and people stopped coming. Some main cities would not even assistance a lousy group. One more sport then became much more well known.
Right here is the rub: We have 120 big teams and now the bowl season has been expanded to 35 games. That means 70 of the 120 teams will play in a bowl game. The predicament has turn out to be so dire that the NCAA is talking about waivers for the reason that not sufficient teams currently qualify to play in a bowl game.
The regular currently is six wins among 12 games – that’s just a stinking .500 record which does not truly merit the reward of a bowl game. Heck, you applied to have to win 7 games to make it into a bowl game. Now there is speak of letting teams with a 5-7 record play in a bowl game since not adequate might qualify with six wins.
This is nonsense. 1 pernicious outcome of this is rewarding incompetency.
It reminds me of parents who all but force their kid to play little league baseball when the kid could care much less. He then plays 12 games on a team that loses every game and, as a reward, they give just about every kid on the team a trophy so their feelings are not hurt by their incompetence.
Parents also feel compelled to have images taken of their tiny “stars” and have them put on baseball cards like they are some sort of big league player. How stupid. The kid learns that being a zero counts for anything. He feels like a absolutely nothing and is a absolutely nothing.
He is denied the blood, sweat and tears of functioning his butt off to in fact create skills, find out to become a group player, and take pleasure in some actual, true life good results – a far a lot more valuable lesson that will support him throughout his life.
Last year, 71 teams became bowl-eligible by winning at least six games, and 68 of them played in bowl games. This year, 64 teams are bowl eligible and 20 may well be if they win once more. Bowl selections are to be announced on Sunday, Dec. five.
Unless somebody with authority puts their foot down, we may well soon see 60 bowl games with just about every important school participating. That may possibly make a person a lot dollars, but the games will be terrible and the players will be cheated out of something pretty critical – the feeling of success that comes from challenging operate and sacrifice, and can’t be replaced.