CFB Bowling Season is still a Go
Are you ready for some college football at Fenway Park in December?
Are you ready for some Boston College football, even if the Eagles fail to reach the .500 mark?
The normal answer in Boston under almost any circumstance would be an emphatic, "No?''
College football in Boston is tough sell in any season, even with marquee attractions.
But a bowl game in Fenway in December between a pair of second tier teams from the American Athletic Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference looked like a non-starter.
Of course, the folks at ESPN, which owns the yet to be inaugurated Fenway Bowl, saw it differently. It saw a college football game played during Christmas week which would draw some ratings simply because it was college football.
That was Pre COVID-19, which changed everything this season and continues to do so each day.
Yet the games--including most of a 40 plus bowl game slate are still on schedule
"We're still trying to finalize things in the next couple of weeks,'' said Nick Carparelli executive director of the Football Bowl Association on Tuesday. ""There will be limited or no fans, but the conferences have said they want to play the bowl games, so we are trying to make that happen.''
There are already several obstacles.
First, the regular season schedule has been pushed back with almost all the conferences holding their championship games on the weekend of Dec.19th.
That would create a scheduling problem for many pre-Christmas bowls.
Carparelli said the majority of the bowl games are being rescheduled to fit in time slots and dates somewhere during Christmas week, which would mean a busy schedule since 27 bowls still do not have set dates or starting times.
The Fenway Bowl is different since it is totally owned and operated by ESPN, which sets not only the date, but the match ups between AAC and ACC teams.
Adding to the chaos is the NCAA ruling eliminating the minimum (.500 record) number of wins for a team to become bowl eligible this season.
Which brings us to Boston College and the Fenway Bowl.
As a start up bowl, ESPN could very well simply delay the first game for one year.
But if it is played and BC has as few as 5 wins (maybe even four), it would, for a variety of reasons, be a prime candidate to fill the ACC slot in the bowl game.