Quite possibly the single most easily mockable bowl game in the history of college football, at least on paper, is underway: Marshall vs. Ohio in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. Thank God the lords of college football are committed to avoiding a legitimate system of determining the sport’s national champion in order to preserve the sublime tradition and pageantry of such scintillating showdowns. Is a 0-0 tie at the end of regulation too much to ask for? 🙂
For what it’s worth, current LRT Bowl Pick ’em Contest leader Jay Johnson picked Ohio. If Marshall wins, Brian Dupuis (DUP) will tie him for the lead.
Later today: the Meineke Car Care Bowl, Pitt vs. UNC, and of course the Emerald Bowl, USC vs. Boston College, presenting the rare opportunity (much like when Notre Dame plays UCLA) when the Irish and Trojan sides of my personality can whole-heartedly agree on the desired outcome of a game. FIGHT ON TROJANS, BEAT FREDO!!!
(I won’t actually be watching, however. My 10th high-school reunion starts at the exact same time as the game: 8:00 PM Eastern tonight. Oh, well.)
Come on Brendan, you can do better.
First, the existence of the Papa John’s bowl does nothing to slow the implementation of a top playoff system. The major bowls are the hinderance to that and if you try and tell me that pagentary and tradition don’t play in to the Sugar and Rose Bowls, you aren’t allowed to comment about college football ever again.
Second, I realize its hard for you to get excited about this bowl game, but for the players, fans, schools, and cities involved its a big deal. Going to bowl games, playing in bowl games, being involved in bowl games is a big deal. It makes money for the schools involved and usually the host cities (otherwise they would stop doing them). That money in many cases will go not just to the football program, but other sports at the respective schools as well. Most college sports are money losers, but we value them anyway, the way we fund them is, in a number of cases, through revenue from the money making programs like football and basketball.
Third, having been involved, in the marching band, in two bowl games (Holiday and Sun) I can tell you that even in a losing game its still a great experience and even if you aren’t playing for the national championship can be a big deal fro the school and its fans and players.
David, of course I “can do better,” but I’m not making a serious argument for a playoff or against the bowl system — I’m just engaging in a bit of mockery. Must every post be a Master’s thesis on the flaws of the BCS? I think my positions are well-known, and have been well-expressed in the past. In this post, I’m just saying that, all other considerations aside, a game called the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl is ridiculous, particularly when it matches up a pair of mediocre teams from bad conferences that nobody wants to watch. But really, I’m not even “saying” that, because that implies a serious argument, and I’m just making a joke about how absurd the whole thing is.
Also, the small bowls are frequently held up by the BCS powers-that-be as a part of the tradition that needs to be preserved (often in rebuttal to playoff schemes that would try to keep alive the larger bowls — as parts of a playoff — but kill off the small ones). So I’m not the one inventing this idea that the small bowls have some relevance to the playoff debate. As far as I’m concerned, they can absolutely continue to exist in a playoff system, but some BCS advocates don’t seem to think so, and further seem to think that preserving them (and their middle-school-ish everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality) is more important than, y’know, crowning a national champion in a remotely defensible way.