Saw this in the Sunday paper. I agree with this article and thought I'd share....
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
BCS has ruined bowl-game tradition
By John Henderson
The Denver Post
The Denver Post
Posted:01/02/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
I'm sitting here on my couch watching the Big Ten look like the Denver Prep League and wondering whatever happened to tradition. No, not Big Ten tradition. I grew up watching Big Ten teams come out from the cold and melt in too many Rose Bowls.
I'm talking about the tradition of New Year's Day, once the greatest holiday of any college football fan, the Christmas of the alumnus.
For most of the 20th century and the vast majority of my life, New Year's Day meant a parade of bowl games. They came like beautiful bowl floats: the Cotton, the Sugar, the Rose, the Fiesta and finally the Orange, overlapping only slightly for 14 hours of football that marked the end of the season by determining the national champion.
Knock the archaic system but don't knock the drama.
Saturday morning, I opened my TV schedule and saw six games. One was named for a Texas ticket broker, another for a bank and one more for a suburban restaurant chain with schlocky commercials.
The Rose Bowl is the lone traditional bowl left on the menu, although I'll give the Fiesta a reluctant nod for its rise to BCS royalty.
Worse, four games are on at the same time. To avoid missing anything, I'd need more TVs than ESPNZone. This is one reason I'm sitting on this couch alone — although the other reasons are between me and my therapist.
For many years, before 1998 when the BCS strung out bowls like kitty litter leaking out of a bag, I had raucous New Year's Day bowl parties. I'd invite all my single male and female friends, load the table with food, the fridge with beer and let the games begin.
In more ways than one.
In 1996, when my Oregon Ducks played Colorado in the Cotton Bowl, I grilled buffalo burgers and had a stuffed buffalo hanging by its neck over the TV. The humiliation of Oregon's 38-6 loss was not aided by watching Nebraska cream Florida 62-24 to win the national title.
But by the time everyone left my party, we all knew the national champion. Jan. 1 had a finality to it, a coronation to start the year. OK, the top two teams rarely met in the same bowl, but sometimes you get a perfect storm.
Take New Year's Day 1984. The top five that day were No. 1 Nebraska, No. 2 Texas, No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Illinois, No. 5 Miami. Then, in order, in the Cotton Bowl Georgia upset Texas 10-9; in the Sugar, Auburn beat Michigan 9-7; in the Rose, UCLA crushed Illinois 45-9; and, finally, in the Orange Bowl, Nebraska's failed two-point conversion gave Miami a 31-30 win and the national title.
Today, I'm still eight days from a national champion. In fact, I must wait until Monday to see the Orange Bowl, Tuesday for the Sugar and Friday for the Cotton, reduced to a second-tier bowl and not even played in the Cotton Bowl anymore.
You can't tell the bowl games without a program.
What happened? What reduced New Year's Day to just another day? Why was my suggestion for a bowl party greeted with shrugs usually reserved for going bowling?
Why am I eating this pizza alone?
As with most everything else in college football today, you can blame the BCS. When the BCS formed in 1998, the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta became the four pillars of the BCS foundation. Each one had a heightened sense of self-importance.
"It was a matter of prime-time exclusivity so more people could watch the games," BCS director Bill Hancock told me Friday. "There's only one prime-time window on New Year's Day."
Hancock said this isn't new. The Sugar Bowl, whose start time always varied, struggled to find a window that didn't overlap some with another bowl. From 1972-75, the Sugar Bowl was played on New Year's Eve. But other than that, it and the Orange Bowl were played on New Year's Day from 1935-95.
This will be the first time the Cotton has been played other than Jan. 1 (or Jan. 2 when Jan. 1 fell on an NFL Sunday) in its 74-year history.
The plan hasn't been universally applauded. Fans wanting to attend this Orange Bowl must get off work Monday, and Stanford students begin class that day. Florida State students have to root for their Seminoles to never get invited. They start class Monday too, and FSU policy requires any student who misses the first day to be tomahawk chopped from the class.
"It does affect attendance," Orange Bowl spokesman Larry Wahl told me. "We had complete sellouts (until) last year. The number of Iowa fans down here last year, as opposed to 2003 for USC, was diminished."
Wahl said Monday's Stanford-Virginia Tech game won't sell out, either.
Too bad it wasn't Saturday. Do we really have to deface New Year's Day with the TicketCity Bowl? But I hold out hope. I have faith in the bowl system, which is why I'm throwing the biggest bash of the new year next Saturday.
Anyone up for a Papajohns.com Bowl party?
