Rickomatic
11-30-2005, 12:42 PM
By Gordon Monson
Salt Lake Tribune Columnist
Every year, the college bowls put a crooked cap on a football season that suddenly tips away from sport and toward something else.
For instance, the argument over whether Notre Dame or Oregon should be invited to the Fiesta Bowl has less to do with which team is most deserving based on what took place on the field and more to do with which program will generate the most money for a corrupt system.
There's a shock.
But, at least for those who want college football to be a real sport, that decision will forever leave competitive justice in the lurch. The Irish of Notre Dame will get the edge not because of what they've done, but because of who they are.
Is there anything that should be more repugnant to American sports fans than that bit of antiquated inequity?
Who they are over what they've done.
Can anybody imagine an NFL postseason in which the Seattle Seahawks are supplanted by the Dallas Cowboys on account of the latter's power to draw an audience? That's not sport, that's favoritism.
And that defines the college postseason.
It's been going on for so long, it's an unfortunately acceptable part of a bowl season that counts that single fundamental flaw as only one of its many shortcomings. And I haven't even brought up the word playoff yet. As a means of soothing the tail that wags the dog in college football, a system that has weaved itself into the so-called pageantry of the game, school presidents shamelessly have rejected the idea of a playoff at the Division I-A level. Why? The greater good, they say, of the student-athlete.
What a crock.
Since players at Division I-AA, II, and III all participate in an annual playoff, what about their greater good? Whose interests are really being protected here? Fifty years from now, sports fans will look back at these dark ages and wonder: What took them so long to get the college postseason right?
Back to the bowls, whose representatives should wear tattered antediluvian raccoon coats instead of pastel-colored blazers, more dysfunctional mayhem has been proliferated by way of bowl proliferation.
There currently are 28 bowl games, involving 56 teams, including many that are pretending to have had something other than ordinary seasons. They will celebrate, still, dropping a cherry atop a steaming pile of mediocrity.
But this way, more teams finish with a win.
Anyone else find anything disingenuous in making a fuss over bowl games, and let's bring it straight home here, that include possibly the eighth- or ninth-place team from the Atlantic Coast Conference going to the Emerald Bowl against a Mountain West team that finished 4-4 in conference and 6-5 overall, or, in the Vegas Bowl, a fifth-place Pac-10 team measuring itself against a 6-5 team from the MWC that counted as one of those victories a whipping of Eastern Illinois?
If there's reason to party here, jump aboard.
Coaches will hang their hats on their teams making bowls, but it's more fluff than stuff. Examining a few of the projections, it looks like Missouri, the No. 8 team from the Big 12, might play Texas-El Paso in the Fort Worth Bowl. The Music City Bowl could reel in Minnesota, the Big Ten's No. 6, versus Georgia Tech.
Come on.
There should be enough room in bowl games to accommodate a deserving 10-2 Wyoming team - remember that '96 travesty when the Cowboys were left out because they didn't travel well? - but not a team from a BCS league so far down the standings that even the players know their effort should not be rewarded.
Even at the lower levels, short of a mandate, bowls want teams more for what they can bring to their games - more fans, better TV ratings - than who played the best football. Vegas lusted after Brigham Young this season not because of the Cougars' prowess, rather their ability, built over the past 30 years, to fill Sam Boyd Stadium. Not that anyone in particular got jobbed in that lusting, but, either way, it wouldn't have mattered.
Bottom line: Competitive justice is more likely to be served if economic windfall for certain entities is part of the deal. That is the dented pageantry of college football.
gmonson@sltrib.com
Salt Lake Tribune Columnist
Every year, the college bowls put a crooked cap on a football season that suddenly tips away from sport and toward something else.
For instance, the argument over whether Notre Dame or Oregon should be invited to the Fiesta Bowl has less to do with which team is most deserving based on what took place on the field and more to do with which program will generate the most money for a corrupt system.
There's a shock.
But, at least for those who want college football to be a real sport, that decision will forever leave competitive justice in the lurch. The Irish of Notre Dame will get the edge not because of what they've done, but because of who they are.
Is there anything that should be more repugnant to American sports fans than that bit of antiquated inequity?
Who they are over what they've done.
Can anybody imagine an NFL postseason in which the Seattle Seahawks are supplanted by the Dallas Cowboys on account of the latter's power to draw an audience? That's not sport, that's favoritism.
And that defines the college postseason.
It's been going on for so long, it's an unfortunately acceptable part of a bowl season that counts that single fundamental flaw as only one of its many shortcomings. And I haven't even brought up the word playoff yet. As a means of soothing the tail that wags the dog in college football, a system that has weaved itself into the so-called pageantry of the game, school presidents shamelessly have rejected the idea of a playoff at the Division I-A level. Why? The greater good, they say, of the student-athlete.
What a crock.
Since players at Division I-AA, II, and III all participate in an annual playoff, what about their greater good? Whose interests are really being protected here? Fifty years from now, sports fans will look back at these dark ages and wonder: What took them so long to get the college postseason right?
Back to the bowls, whose representatives should wear tattered antediluvian raccoon coats instead of pastel-colored blazers, more dysfunctional mayhem has been proliferated by way of bowl proliferation.
There currently are 28 bowl games, involving 56 teams, including many that are pretending to have had something other than ordinary seasons. They will celebrate, still, dropping a cherry atop a steaming pile of mediocrity.
But this way, more teams finish with a win.
Anyone else find anything disingenuous in making a fuss over bowl games, and let's bring it straight home here, that include possibly the eighth- or ninth-place team from the Atlantic Coast Conference going to the Emerald Bowl against a Mountain West team that finished 4-4 in conference and 6-5 overall, or, in the Vegas Bowl, a fifth-place Pac-10 team measuring itself against a 6-5 team from the MWC that counted as one of those victories a whipping of Eastern Illinois?
If there's reason to party here, jump aboard.
Coaches will hang their hats on their teams making bowls, but it's more fluff than stuff. Examining a few of the projections, it looks like Missouri, the No. 8 team from the Big 12, might play Texas-El Paso in the Fort Worth Bowl. The Music City Bowl could reel in Minnesota, the Big Ten's No. 6, versus Georgia Tech.
Come on.
There should be enough room in bowl games to accommodate a deserving 10-2 Wyoming team - remember that '96 travesty when the Cowboys were left out because they didn't travel well? - but not a team from a BCS league so far down the standings that even the players know their effort should not be rewarded.
Even at the lower levels, short of a mandate, bowls want teams more for what they can bring to their games - more fans, better TV ratings - than who played the best football. Vegas lusted after Brigham Young this season not because of the Cougars' prowess, rather their ability, built over the past 30 years, to fill Sam Boyd Stadium. Not that anyone in particular got jobbed in that lusting, but, either way, it wouldn't have mattered.
Bottom line: Competitive justice is more likely to be served if economic windfall for certain entities is part of the deal. That is the dented pageantry of college football.
gmonson@sltrib.com