The college football season finally ends on January 20 with a national championship game.
Finally.
Recall that college football games used to cease after the New Year’s Day Bowl extravaganzas featuring Rose, Cotton, Sugar, and Orange. Then, there’d be a poll to determine the national champion.
Times have changed.
Inevitably, there was controversy over those polls. Sometimes, a certain coaches’ poll would conflict with, say, an Associated Press poll.
“We should have a playoff to determine the true national champion!” cried many.
And so it came to pass. A playoff sequence integrating existing bowls with the top four teams seemed reasonable. But what later also came to pass was unreasonable. This season involved an unwieldy twelve-team “tournament.” How can college football student-athletes properly study and go to class with an extra month of games taking them into the spring semester?
One would think these college gridsters were pros!
Truth be told, big-time college football players are pros now, replete with free agency, sports agents, major endorsement deals, and complicated contracts.
Fighting Irish legend Knute Rockne must be rolling over in his Cedar Grove Cemetery grave on the University of Notre Dame campus.
The first college bowl game occurred on Jan. 1, 1902, in Pasadena, Calif. Sportscaster Keith Jackson always referred to the Rose Bowl as the “Granddaddy of them all!” Michigan (11-0) came west to play Stanford (3-2-2). Trailing 49-0 in the third quarter, Stanford quit playing, and the game ended early.
The 1902 Rose Bowl was such a hit that the second Rose Bowl game didn’t take place until 1916 when Washington State defeated Brown University to restore West Coast honor. Eventually, other Bowl games joined the Grandaddy on New Year’s Day. In 1935, the Sugar, Orange, and Sun Bowls came about. The Cotton Bowl started in 193,7 and the Gator Bowl in 1946. Warm weather was obviously a requirement.
This year featured around 40 Division I bowl games, starting Dec. 14 when the Veterans Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama, pitted South Alabama (6-6) against Western Michigan (6-6). That’s right, a Bowl Game in which neither team had a winning record.
Then there was the Myrtle Beach Bowl on Dec. 23, in Conway, S.C., where Coastal Carolina (6-6) played UTSA (6-6). I wonder what scalpers got for ducats to that grid classic.
Even cold-weather cities are now afflicted with Bowl Mania. New Englanders have the Fenway Bowl in Boston, which on Dec. 28 featured North Carolina (6-6) playing the UConn Huskies—who actually had a winning (8-4) record!
Not to be outdone, Yankee Stadium also hosted the Pinstripe Bowl Game the same day, which ironically pitted Boston College (7-5) against Nebraska (6-6). So why couldn’t BC play in the Fenway Bowl?
The Pinstripe Bowl actually started in 2010, predating the Fenway Bowl by 11 years.
(An aside: Speaking of Boston copying New York, the Boston Garden opened in 1928. In a burst of originality, it was originally named the Boston Madison Square Garden. New York’s Madison Square Garden dates back to the 19th Century and was seen as something Boston should try to emulate. I kid you not.)
Anyway, while I understand the appeal of bowl games, I actually wish some of them would just go away! Too much is too much. Enough with the 6-6 teams! And there are defunct Bowl Games. We’ll hopefully never again see a Bacardi Bowl, a Bluebonnet Bowl, an Aloha Bowl, a Cherry Bowl, a Poinsettia Bowl, or a Salad Bowl (born 1948, expired 1955).
If only the Myrtle Beach Bowl could also die with dignity.
(Fun Fact: The NFL actually has an expired bowl—the Playoff Bowl, 1960-69, aka the Burt Bell Benefit Bowl. This grid classic featured the Eastern Conference runner-up against the Western Conference runner-up for the coveted title of “Third Best NFL Team.” It was played annually in the Orange Bowl following the NFL title tilt. After Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers lost the 1965 Playoff Bowl to the St. Louis Cardinals, the legendary coach called the Playoff Bowl “the Sh*t Bowl, a hinky dink football game, held in a hinky dink town, played by hinky dink players. That’s all that second place is—hinky dink.”)
The bad news is that after January 20th’s championship game there will still be more college football. The Senior Bowl all-star game will take place in Mobile, Alabama, on February 1. The good news is it will then be at least ten months until the 2025 Celebration Bowl, the second week in December in Atlanta.
R.I.P Knute Rockne.
