The Battleplan.blogspot.com Bowl

It's been college football "Bowl Season" for a couple of weeks now, with the premier games being played today and within the next few days.

Traditionally, there have been few Bowl games that actually meant something - games like the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and Rose Bowl.

As for the other Bowl games - well, I hate to break it to you, some college football teams - they just don't mean anything. There's been a record number of Bowl games this college football season. So it's not like they're inviting the best of the best to the bowl games. Teams that were 6-6 during their regular season have the chance to play.

So why are they playing? Money, of course. The teams involved share a payout given by the sponsor of the bowl game. It's as "little" as $250,000 and as much as $17 million. Imagine that. A team that has achieved a state of mediocrity for the season - winning as many games as they've lost - can receive quite a sum of money. Sure, it's a big deal for some of the smaller colleges, but for the ones with big sports programs, it's just more money to throw into the pile. And is the money going into the school? Not likely. More likely the money gets put into the sports program, rather than going towards improving academics. I read an article a few years back that said close to half of colleges going to bowl games were on track to graduate less than 50% of their players at the end of the college year. It's not like these players are guaranteed a job in the NFL, either. So where does that leave them? Shouldn't some of that money go towards academics then?

Speaking of money, many companies are paying it out to get "sponsorship" of many of these bowl games. The narrator in Fight Club quips at one point, that when we colonize space, it will be the corporations that name everything - like the Microsoft Galaxy. Sadly, it's not too far off. Most of the new sports stadiums these days are named after companies (Minute Maid Park in Houston - gag!), and now many of the bowl games bear the names of the corporations that sponsor them.

Say goodbye to the Humanitarian Bowl - say hello to the MPC Computers Bowl! The Copper Bowl is history, replaced by the Insight Bowl. The Florida Citrus Bowl has made way for the Capital One Bowl. Hall of Fame Bowl? Not anymore. Now it's the Outback Bowl (for Outback Steakhouse, of course). Where as a college player I may have been proud to represent my team in the Peach Bowl, now I get to represent my team in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. Of course new bowl games pop up each year. A new entry this season was the Papajohns.com Bowl. Yes, you read that right - the Papajohns.com Bowl. Don't get me wrong, I love Papa John's Pizza, but the name "Papajohns.com Bowl" is absolutely horrid. I'd be embarrassed to tell someone I was playing in that game. But that's just me. At least my team would still be sharing in a payout of $300,000.

Get real, NCAA. Do we really need over two dozen bowl games? It's not like they have the pageantry of regular season games. If a regular fan of a college team wants to go to a bowl game for their team, often they have to travel out of state and pay large ticket fees. Can you afford a ticket to the Fiesta Bowl? $2,500 for the worst seats? I sure can't. Maybe if those teams would share some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they got for just showing up.