01 January 2010

bowl games!

currently on: Penn State (10-2) v LSU (9-3) in the Capital One Bowl. Gator Bowl features West Virginia (9-3) v Florida State (6-6).

What? 6 and 6 gets you a bowl bid these days?

Granted, I don't really follow college ball, nor am I familiar with the agreements in place for determining who will play in which bowl. Heck, maybe Fl State did so well in their division with 6-6 that they got an automatic bid. I didn't even check.

or maybe they got a bid because their coach, Bobby Bowden, is retiring. Hey, I'm just some guy, but if a team got an undeserved bid because of off-field factors, meaning a more deserving team is at home watching TV today, i think that stinks.

8 comments:

JustJoeP said...

the entire College Bowl setup is baloney. I am sick and tired of hearing ANYONE referred to as a "national champion" - there's lots of regional champions, but no "national one" - and as an Alumni of a AAA school that doesn't try to go to bowl games, I think the whole focus on TV promos and sports funding is completely out of whack. "Lame" is too kind of a label, me thinks. =)

pyker said...

When did college teams start playing 12 games in a season? Didn't it used to be 10?

zim said...

hm, i'm now looking at this page of college bowls. So many! 34, by my count. And maybe 6-6 isn't so unique, as the (now) 6-7 Minnesota Gophers lost the Insight Bowl, whatever that is.

I propose a Basement Bowl, where the team with the worst record in the Big Ten gets to play, oh I don't know, a team fielded by Purdue Cal.

KnuckleSplitter said...

Too many bowls games. And that means teams that shouldn't be going get to go.

NCAAF is long overdue for some kind of play-off system leading to a real championship. I would rather see this instead of the excess number of bowl games.

Having said that, I think the BCS usually gets it right, or very close. But that is an opinion, not a verifiable fact. The only way to make it verifiable is a play-off system.

I like the Basement Bowl idea, Zim. How 'bout the worst team in 1-A plays the best team in 1-AA too?

zim said...

@matt -- yes, actually i'd like to see that concept extended all over the place, including the NFL.

the winner of the national championship game gets to play the NFL team with the worst record. if the NFL team wins, they get to draft someone from their opponent. if the college team wins... well, let's make it like (non-American) football: the NFL team gets demoted to NCAA, and the entire college team goes pro!

zim said...

also - i'm watching the Cotton bowl, where a player from Ole Miss just scooped up a fumble and returned it for a TD.

he must have grabbed his crotch afterwards or something, because he was flagged for an unsportsmanlike that the ref described as "calling attention to one's self."

pyker said...

There should be promotion/relegation with US sports, as there is with soccer in the UK. Especially with professional baseball and college football divisions.

zim said...

and said the color announcer, sarcastically, "if it's the ultimate team sport, we can't be calling attention to one's self."