Center of the Sports Universe

Tomorrow we’re expecting a formal announcement to be made introducing the Yankee Bowl to the 2010 Bowl Line-up. The bowl game will be hosted in Yankee Stadium up in New York City, where an audience of up to 47,000 will watch the Big East #4 take on Big 12 #7. (If Notre Dame heads to the Champs Sports Bowl, Big East #3 goes to the Yankee Bowl. Also, if the Big 12 can’t send up to 7 teams to bowl games, Notre Dame takes the Big 12 spot.) This could potentially mean some very interesting Yankee Bowl matches (Anyone want to guess the score of a Cincy-Texas Tech match-up?), and coupling this with the draw of New York City could be good news for all involved.

The additional bowl means there will be 35 bowl games in 2010. This means 70 of the 120 IA teams will be playing in a bowl in 2010. That’s pushing 60%. Is this good for College Football? Wasn’t there a time when going to a bowl was special? It’s clear that this bowl has little to do with improving the quality of the college football culture, and more to do with a collective effort to make money. They are entitled to do so, and will probably succeed. Hey, I’d even go as far as to say bowls will continue to pop up until the last bowl comes out in the red. But where is that equilibrium?

In 2008, you could have tuned in the last week to see one of any 34 bowls. You could have, for example, checked out the Motor City Bowl featuring Central Michigan and Florida Atlantic. Or perhaps Penn State vs. USC. All these teams of course look back on their bowl game last season, and all 4 throw those wins, losses, attendance figures, etc, into their bowl stats. Isn’t it a little misleading if you’re bragging on your bowl-streak when over half of IA teams make it to these bowls? That means some of the bottom half of IA get rights to bring up the “b” word when discussing their “success”.

I don’t want to see teams back out of bowl on this principle, and I don’t think the NCAA should stop bowl games from happening if people willingly get their butts on an airplane to stay in a hotel and attend the game. But I think the bowl landscape is changing and with it, we might be doing ourselves a favor if we adjust our lenses in the process. Beware the “B” word.