Column: Bowl Mania

A few weeks ago, I talked about how I would do my best to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year, but I was in bed well before the new decade. I remember my Grandpa once telling me nothing good ever happens after midnight, so I probably didn't miss anything too positive and I was also rested for a day off in the middle of the week which is a rare treat.

If it was a decade ago, I probably would have spent my New Year's Day with a headache and watching football, but football on January 1 is not the same these days. Gone are the days when the four best teams played and instead there is a playoff that not only steals those teams but steals two of the huge bowl games to play on a day that can garner the biggest television ratings, which was December 28 in 2019.

It also doesn't help that there are over 30 bowl games and it really isn't that huge of a reward to qualify for one. Growing up I can remember the huge games that took place in the Orange, Fiesta, Rose, and Sugar Bowls, and my alma mater the University of Wyoming winning their conference and qualifying for the Holiday Bowl which was known as a really exciting bowl game against a really good opponent. In 1988 Wyoming rose to as high as number 10 in the AP Poll and faced off against 12th ranked Oklahoma State in the Holiday Bowl. The other Cowboys had a running back named Barry Sanders who ruined the experience for me, but they still made it to a game that meant something.

Nowadays you have games that start a few days before Christmas and teams can play in the Tropical Smoothie Café Frisco Bowl, Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl, and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise. It almost feels like I'm making these games up, but I'm not. Two years ago, Wyoming actually played in the bowl game in Boise and while it was good national television coverage for the team and stud quarterback Josh Allen, I just can't imagine how exciting it was for my fellow Poke fans to travel to Idaho before Christmas to watch football in a half-empty stadium with blue turf. I thought about it, but shouldn't a bowl game be somewhere warm, against a really good team, and not in the snow against Central Michigan?

This year Wyoming played in the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl and put on an amazing performance in front of a national audience. While I think this was a positive for a program on the rise who is the lone University in one of the most sparsely populated states in the country, I think there are just way too many bowl games. If over half the Division 1 teams in the nation qualify, what reward is it to make a bowl game?

There was a game a couple of years ago with a 5-7 team taking on a 6-6 squad in what was an epic toilet bowl. Neither one of those teams needed to be playing an extra game. They didn't deserve it. We need to quit rewarding mediocrity, especially for the schools in the big-time conferences. Another time I went and watched Wyoming play UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl and the Bruins flat out did not want to be there. They much rather have been on the beach than playing in a rare Southern Nevada storm in a crappy stadium on the outskirts of Vegas.

I'm sure the powers that be with the NCAA are never going to come to ask me for my opinion but if they ever did, I'd also tell them to put the top four teams back on New Year's Day --- not on December 28 or the two years they did on New Year's Eve. The best games belong on January 1, period!

I'm sure in time the football version of the Final 4 will return to January 1, but the year that happens I will most likely make it to midnight the night before and still be in bed for the kickoff.