So apparently not everyone digs the idea of having a playoff, even though it seems to work so well in the other divisions of the NCAA. That being said, if the bowl system is not going to go anywhere, we can at least make some adjustments, some slight and some significant, to improve the system and its aesthetics. So here are my ideas for reforming the system.
1. Reduce the number of bowl games. This one is a no-brainer for everyone except the coaches who have been offered the following ultimatum: bowl or die! With 34 bowl games and 68 bowl slots, almost every team with an even or better record in the Football Bowl Subdivision goes to the postseason. That is 57%! By comparison, only 12% of non-abstaining members of the Football Championship Subdivision advance to the Division I FCS playoff; this will increase to 16% in 2010 as their playoff enlarges to 20 teams.
So we want to reduce the number of bowl games. Where do we start? The following points offer some guidelines on which directions to pursue as we pare down the number of bowl games. If we can generalize, the main factors that will determine a bowl’s demise or its survival will be tradition, longevity, and uniqueness.
2. Eliminate games that are owned by the media. There exists a bit of a conflict of interest when the same media that are covering a game also organize the game not only to make money (because making money is the point of these bowl games) but to provide programming for its own networks. Bowl games should be organized by independent committees. Bowl games should usually have unique organization, although two bowl games organized by the same group seems to work well. The main offenders are the six bowl games owned by ESPN Regional Television: St. Petersburg Bowl, papajohns.com bowl, New Mexico Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, and Hawaii Bowl. As you will see, these bowl games generate other offenses that we are aiming to eliminate.
3. Eliminate games that are played before Christmas. Very few people want to travel before or over Christmas unless the destination is truly fabulous, like Hawaii. The fact that there is very little appeal for these games unless you are a college football fanatic or you have an affiliation with one of those teams makes the concept a dud, although sometimes the games turn out to be very good.
That said, as you will see frequently here, there are exceptions to the rules that qualify as unique. In this case, I recommend two bowl games that are and should continue to be played prior to Christmas, based on the niches they have carved: Poinsettia Bowl and New Orleans Bowl. The Poinsettia Bowl lacks the artificiality of many of the early bowl games and is owned by the same folks that bring you the perennially exciting Holiday Bowl. The New Orleans Bowl serves as one of the few remaining constants as the destination of a conference champion, similar to the way the Rose Bowl serves as a goal for the Big Ten and Pac 10.
4. Eliminate cold weather games. Bowl games serve as a vacation for everyone involved in their production, competition, and in-person observation. Very few people want to participate in a bowl game anywhere that is not warm or even somewhat warm in December and January. Does the thought of potential freezing temperatures at the EagleBank Bowl fire you up? What about heading to frigid Boise for the Humanitarian Bowl? That is what I thought. At most allow one cold weather game. Boise is a unique place, but that city has its own set of problems, as we will see in the next point. Note that this heading does not include games played indoors like the Motor City Bowl played in Detroit, which is frigid outdoors.
5. Eliminate games that are in hard-to-reach places. Given most attendees of a bowl game are coming from a significant distance, they are going to want to be able to easily fly to and from their bowl destination. A large metro area usually ensures a large airport from which it is not difficult to fly without an excessive number of connections or aerial backtracking. Most games offer few problems related to transportation, but there are a few bowl games that are held in small metro areas with small airports. The most notable offender here? Boise. The nearest major airport is in Salt Lake City almost 400 miles away. Other bowl games in small metro areas with small airports include the Independence Bowl (Shreveport) and the GMAC Bowl (Mobile). Another bowl game features an exotic location with a major airport, but still requires crossing half an ocean to get to: the Hawaii Bowl.
6. Eliminate corporate bowl names. I am not opposed to corporate support of bowl games. This sponsorship helps pay the bills and helps companies give their names and products exposure to a national audience. I would not have ever heard of magicJack were it not sponsoring the St. Petersburg Bowl. However, a disturbing trend in the last several years is bowl games that have the name of a company in the actual bowl name. Bowl names should be commodities (oranges, sugar, roses) or unique characteristics of a destination (music city, alamo, holiday). They should not be named after fast food (Chick-Fil-A Bowl), internet companies (Insight Bowl), internet fast food (papajohns.com bowl), or athletic retail (Champs Sports Bowl). I will make an exception for the Outback Bowl, for which it took me several years to figure out it was not a reference to rural Australia but to Outback Steakhouse. No rules. Just right.
That said, there are some bowl sponsorship that is unacceptable. No, I am not talking about alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. This one is very topical, but no sponsorship by companies that are being bailed out by the federal government. Remove Citi’s presentation of the Rose Bowl Game. Eliminate the GMAC Bowl, which is named for the financing arm of General Motors, and the Big Three’s sponsorship of the Motor City Bowl.
7. Eliminate bowl games that will unabashedly invite the home team to sell tickets. The main offenders here are bowls held at the stadiums of Mountain West and WAC teams, a list that includes the Humanitarian Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, and the most blatant, the Hawaii Bowl, which features the University of Hawaii whenever the Warriors are bowl eligible and not playing in the BCS. These games came about because members of Les Petit Cinq wanted some additional bowl tie-ins that they had control over. While there are many bowl games that would love for the local team to play there to guarantee a full house, the bowl selection process is such that those games only expect such an occurance once every several years. For instance, this season Georgia Tech is playing in the hometown Chick-Fil-A nee Peach Bowl for the first time in nine years. The exception to the widely scattered home team distribution is USC, which plays in the Rose Bowl almost every year in the Pete Carroll era.
8. Downsize venues if the crowds are not expected to fill the stadium. The major bowls and many of the mid-level bowls lack this problem, but crowd size is a serious problem for many of the minor bowls. This is also a problem with other neutral site games. For instance, there could not have been more than 25000 people at the ACC Championship Game. A paltry 13000 people filled Ford Field for the MAC Championship Game; that is 20% capacity! Which do you think the bowl organizers and media prefer: a full house that is rocking, or a one-third full cavernous NFL stadium with vast seas of empty seats? With the same bowl games occurring annually, organizers should have a very good idea of which games will attract 70000+ and which games will attract less than 30000 fans.
Playing in an NFL stadium may sound exciting at first, but it loses its novelty very quickly when each team only brings 10000 fans. The solution to the problem is not laying a tarp on the upper deck sections. The solution to this problem is to hold the bowls in smaller stadiums. For instance, the New Orleans Bowl has never attracted a crowd larger than 28000. Due to Hurricane Katrina seriously damaging the Louisiana Superdome, the usual home of the New Orleans Bowl was unable to host it. Instead, the game was held at Cajun Field at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Instead of trying to fill the cavernous home of the Saints, the 2005 New Orleans Bowl was played at 58% capacity. One idea for achieving a regular full or nearly full house for the New Orleans Bowl is to hold the game at Tad Gormley Stadium, the second largest stadium in New Orleans, which has a capacity of 26500. Many of the smaller bowl games could find smaller stadiums in their host cities to rent instead of relying on massive NFL stadiums.
9. Eliminate ubiquitous use of conference bowl tie-ins. In the past, bowls did not have hard-and-fast conference tie-ins. They would invite whoever they would like to participate in their game. Some bowls had characteristics they strove to achieve, such as the Rose Bowl inviting an Eastern team to play a team from the West Coast, but these left plenty of discretion for the bowl organizers.
Those days are long gone. Today, almost every bowl has tie-ins with two conferences. The Gator Bowl can invite anyone they want, as long as one team is from the ACC and the other is from the Big East, Big 12, or Notre Dame. Conferences also set rules, such as the one that prevents a 4-4 team from being selected ahead of a 6-2 team in many conferences. The Pac 10 takes this to the extreme, as the order of finish determines who goes where. If California finishes fourth five times in a row, they are playing in San Francisco five times in a row, assuming the tie-in order does not change.
I propose a return to the days of the bowl committees having much more freedom. I am not suggesting prohibiting bowl tie-ins; rather, remove the straightjacket if it does not fit. For historical reasons, the Rose Bowl will continue to select the champions of the Pac 10 and Big Ten. But the Peach Bowl should not be constrained to ACC #2 and SEC #5. Let the bowls name the teams they want to play in their game. A benefit of this is we are less likely to get dud matchups; the bowl committees will have a strong interest in getting two evenly-matched teams to serve their product.
10. Return all of the big bowl games to New Year’s Day. There was a time when all of the big games, the ones that are now under the BCS umbrella, were all played the same day. Add in a few games a bit lower on the totem pole, and there were enough bowl games to watch to avoid having to watch the NHL Winter Classic for January 1st sports action if the ongoing games are snoozers. Imagine the following games held all in one day: Outback Bowl, Gator Bowl, Florida Citrus Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Orange Bowl.
Compare that to the current situation, where there are only five games on January 1, with two of them occupying exclusive time slots. If that game goes bad, there is no more college football to whch to change the channel. In addition, the bowl season now stretches through January 8. Television was clearly the big mover here, as the media wants the biggest games held at the time of biggest ratings, at night, with exclusivity of time slot to avoid splitting football audiences in television land. Does a January 8 game really feel like the holiday season? Is the Fiesta Bowl as special when you need to work during the day? A side effect of the week extension of bowl season is the proliferation of bowl games, such as the GMAC Bowl and International Bowl, that have sprouted their niches in January where they do not belong. The media may not like it, but a return to the smorgasbord of college football that was once January 1 (or January 2 in years where New Year’s Day is a Sunday) is one of ten steps in the right direction.