Sorry to all of you avid followers (thanks, dad) for not publishing my piece last night on the current state of men's tennis. It was my birthday and I decided to spend some time with the wife and newborn. I will get to that one later in the week.
I was looking at the addition of two new bowls this week: the St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Pete's, FL, featuring a team from the Big East and Conference USA; and the Congressional Bowl in the nation's capital, featuring Navy (if eligible) and the 9th-place ACC team. Yes, the 9th place ACC team. All you have to do is not finish in the bottom 1/4 of the conference and you can go to a bowl game. I'm going to ignore the fact that in the 3-year history of the 12-team ACC, they've never had 9 bowl eligible teams. Let's just take a look at what it would take to go bowling in the ACC.
Schedule your yearly maximum 1 I-AA team. Let's throw in two Sun Belt teams, how about Florida International and Louisiana-Lafayette for good measure, they did win 4 WHOLE games combined last year. How about a MAC bottom-feeder to polish off the schedule? Kent State sound good? They won 3 games all by themselves last year. Now all we have to do is beat Duke and North Carolina and we will get REWARDED with a bowl game, accompanied with its couple-hundred thousand dollar payout. [But hey, whether we manage to beat Duke or not, we'll still get to split that big BCS paycheck given to all ACC schools.] Being NC State never looked so good!
I think this is great for Navy, to have an automatic bowl tie-in for a game in Washington DC. I'm sure someone like last year's 8-4 Troy team (who handily beat a bowl-bound 6-6 OK State) might be a little more deserving of a bowl slot than a barely-avoided-bottom-0f-the-rung ACC squad. The small bowl payout would also go a lot further for a university like that (since they get nothing if they don't send a team bowling) than the already-getting-millions-for-simply-having-the-right-conference-affiliation ACC team. A 9th-place ACC team! Now that's a joke.
You are acting as if this is the straw that broke the camel's back...the quality of bowl teams has been diluted for several years now. There have been several years where there almost weren't enough eligible teams. You know what? I don't care. I love watching bowl games...I can't imagine having the opportunity to play in one, even if I was on the last place team in the Sun Belt. I say give as many players to play in a bowl game as possible. Doesn't bother me one bit...If anyone wants to go to the Congressional Bowl, you've got a couch to sleep on, and someone to sit next to at the game.
ReplyDeleteI'm not ragging on the quality of bowl games, I'll watch Navy play whomever. I love those 3 weeks, even if I'm watching something like Akron against New Mexico State in the Insight.whocares.com bowl.
ReplyDeleteI'm just saying that instead of giving the 9th place ACC team (which has never actually qualified for a bowl game) a slot, give it to someone like the 2nd place Sun Belt team. It may not be a BCS-quality team, but at least they probably won 5 or 6 conference games, which deserves more merit than winning only 2, regardless of conference. The small school's fans would be pumped to be in a bowl game. Their team could benefit from the practice, etc. For last year's 8-4, lost one conference game, Troy team to not go bowling was a travesty, but this year's 6-6, lost to every halfway decent team we played, Miami could go.
More comments from my dad:
ReplyDeleteYou were right on with your analysis of the bowl situation. As more bowls get added they will all want a BCS school tie-in as those schools' fans are much more likely to support their team at the bowl game and spend money. Look at the new bowls in [the west] that wanted the MWC affiliation until they got going and then went to a PAC team and another BCS conference. Non BCS schools just don't travel well. When you look at the average of the WAC and MWC attendance at their football games, which are in the 20's and 30's respectively, who would want those teams to come to their bowl game? After the top three in the WAC you are down to under 20,000 fans a game. Then go to the BCS conferences, and except for the Big East they all average over 70,000 a game. Who would you want to invite? Just some thoughts.