A Jersey Guy: Bowling Season Needs to be Limited
The college football regular season will come to a thundering conclusion on Saturday night, with the crowning of conference champions and an assortment of "make up'' games being played for no understandable reason.
The college football bowl season will begin two nights later with the newly minted Myrtle Beach Bowl in Conway, South Carolina, matching 8-3 Appalachian State against 4-5 North Texas.
Is this a great country or what?
Much has been said and written and debated about the COVID-19 riddled college football season.
It will be forever part of CFB history.
But we are in the present and the issues continue, only now it is the post season, with an assortment of bowl games leading up to the CFB national championship game, scheduled to be played in Miami on January 11.
Playing a regular season was necessary for a variety of reasons, most of them financial.
Playing in the post season--other than the New Year's Six games, which are spread over a 3 day period from Dec. 30th (Cotton) to January 2 (Fiesta and Orange)--makes no sense.
Here's why.
This year's bowl games--including the CFB semifinal at the Rose Bowl--will be devoid of fans, and almost all other activities other than the game itself.
Playing in a New Year's Day game remains a big deal, even without many frills and it will match up the top 8 to 12 teams in the country, each with superior records.
But the other bowls?
Sorry, not this year.
Even American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco concedes the "bowl'' experience will be bare bones operations, with even the concept of playing the game subject to change.
""We were holding our breath every week,'' said Aresco, when asked about how the AAC schedule played itself out. ""The bowls will be the same way. The bowls and are ESPN are working on schedules which keeps teams as close to the bowl site as possible.''
ESPN, ah the magic word.
Over the past few years, ESPN, the self proclaimed world wide leader'' regarding sporting events has regressed to some of its original plans--which is to simply televise sporting events and not branch too far into the world of reporting or analysis, which has been evidenced by massive layoffs ESPN has made outside of event coverage.
One of the staples of ESPN programming during bowl week, with almost all of the originally scheduled 37 post season games in the FBS telecast on ESPN or ABC networks.
Cancelling the schedule because of the pandemic was just not a bottom line issue that the boys in Mickey Mouse World were willing to consider.
Thus the games (most of them) are on schedule, aided by the NCAA (always a trend setter) approved edict to allow teams with under .500 records to participate in post season games.
What has been encouraging was the decision by some schools such as Pitt, Boston College, Virginia to not participate in any bowl game, opting to spend Christmas week at home with their families, rather than to get on a plane and fly to a place like Frisco Texas (outside of Dallas), be sequestered in a hotel for 24 hours, play a game which means nothing and then go home.
You think we are kidding?
Check the ESPN bowl schedule for Christmas Eve, where the New Mexico Bowl--which has been moved to Frisco because of New Mexico state CoVID-19 restrictions--will match up 3-4 Houston vs...wait....4-4 Hawaii, which is being asked to fly almost 4,000 miles to play a football game and then get on a plane and fly home on Christmas Day.
Welfare of student athletes?
There are other examples, of course, but in fairness there are a few match ups next week which will be interesting, such as BYU flying to Boca Raton, Florida to play in the Boca Bowl on Tuesday night for a game against UCF, which looks like a fun-match up.
Those are the exceptions.
For the most part, bowl week will be a shameless move by ESPN to sustain programming, which is fine, since it is a bottom line business venture and can probably make some money from each game.
In terms of what is right, what is best for the participants?
Not so much.
There will most likely more cancellations in the next few days as the inventory of players and coaches who have simply had enough continue to grow.
Having said all of that, our hope is that everything possible will be done to preserve the CFB semifinals and championship game and even the other New Year's Six bowl games.
With no end game in site for when the COVID-19 cases will spike and the newly created vaccines will start to push back, both the players and the fans deserve a reward or a conclusion to the season that will never be forgotten.