Opinion : Are there too many college bowl games?

I come from the era when there were less than 10 bowl games. Yes, less than 10.

The first year I really remember paying that much attention to the bowls was in the 1965-66 season. You had the four New Year’ Day games: Sugar, Cotton, Rose and Orange. Then, you had five lesser bowls that were played in the days before Jan. 1: Sun, Gator, Tangerine, Bluebonnet and Liberty.

You had to be pretty good to make a bowl. In all likelihood, you had to have won your conference championship, or had an overpoweringly great season.

The 1965-66 bowl season had one interesting situation right off the bat: Neither of the top-ranked teams in the country went to a bowl. Notre Dame finished with record of 9-0-1 and was ranked number one. In those days, the National Champion was declared BEFORE the bowls, so the Irish were National Champs. And the school had a policy in those days that they didn’t go to bowls (something about it interfering with semester tests).

Michigan State was also 9-0-1, ranked No. 2, and won the Big Ten. That tie you see on both records was to each other, the immortal 10-10 tie at midseason. But the Spartans couldn’t go bowling because of a bizarrely created rule. Until 1972, the Big Ten had a “no-repeat” rule, meaning the same team could not represent the conference in Pasadena two years in a row. Sparty had gone to the Rose Bowl the year before, which put conference runner-up Purdue in the game.

All of this long explanation is to preface today’s discussion, which is: “Are there too many bowl games?” Subtitle: “Are we encouraging mediocrity?”

Whereas as recently as 30 years, bowl games were rewards for excellent seasons, they have now become a reward for mediocrity; an “attaboy” award; a participation award.

Whereas in 1965 18 teams went to bowls, now 72 go. Seventy-two?!! All it takes is a conference championship or a .500 record. Iowa State, who I support in football, is going to a bowl game after finishing 9th out of 10 teams in their conference.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see that the Cyclones get to play a 13th game (although I think they could have done better than having a rematch with a team they beat earlier this year), it’s in one of the older bowls (Liberty) and for fans that are going, Memphis on New Year’s Eve actually sounds pretty fun.

But the question is, should it be this way? The answer is probably no, but that’s the answer to lot of questions. And it doesn’t always change things.

At some point in time, the NCAA decided to let any organization that wanted to start a bowl game. It’s become like a big part of the county fair or community holiday celebration. And while it used to be that you played bowl games in warm climates, now games are played in Detroit, New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Any community or organization who wants to put up the money and find a sponsor can have a bowl game.

And it can be a community windfall. You get 250 football players, two coaching staff, two marching bands and cheerleading squads and 10,000 to 20,000 fans to descend on your area for a few days and it rings up some cash registers. Hey, let’s move Boomtown to December, expand Karr Athletic Complex to about 30,000 seats, and start the Boomtown Bowl! With the right money and sponsorship, it could be done!

But the question remains as to whether it should be done? And there truly are good reasons for answering yes.

There’s the money. The participating schools and their conferences both get a windfall out of the deal. Granted, a lot of times, the participating schools might only break even or even lose money on the deal, but there’s more to it than that.

The bowl teams get another month of full practices. They get to play a game nationally on ESPN that is the only game on at the time. They can show recruits they get national exposure and with a win, you get a trophy to put in that trophy case, which always looks nice.

And has the wise old sage of football in this state, one John Hayden Fry used to say, “Any bowl is a good bowl.”

But does everyone think that?

Purists or old timers harken back to the days when bowls were a reward rather than an entitlement. Whereas this year, Iowa State is limping into Memphis with a 6-6 record, 36 years ago, a great season wasn’t enough.

In 1976, Iowa State went into their final game of the season with a record of 8-2.

If they were to beat Oklahoma State, the Cyclones would have finished 9-2 and in a four-way tie for the Big Eight championship with Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska. And, with the win, the Cyclones would have had the best overall record. Taking all of that into account, it was expected that an ISU win in Stillwater would have not only put them into a bowl, but it would have put them into the Orange Bowl against Ohio State.

But, as history shows, ISU lost, badly. Oklahoma State ended up winning 42-21. The Cowboys would match Iowa State and Colorado with 8-3 records. The Buffalos ended up in the Orange Bowl, OSU went to the Tangerine Bowl and Iowa State went home.

So we get back to our question: Are their too many bowls? Yes. And no. And with that, let’s enjoy the holidays and the bowl season...all 36 of them.