Lay it Down College Football Bowl Games

Lay it Down College Football Bowl Games

This pains me to write this. Really. Painful -because I LOVE football. I used to say, if there is football on TV somewhere, I will probably watch it. I go into withdrawal right after the Pro Bowl. I pine throughout the summer waiting for September to usher in another football season. I dread the endless highlights of baseball on ESPN during the summer. How many different ways can I see a homerun, a diving catch, a 6-4-3 double-play. It gets old, real quick. Baseball doesn’t matter till September and October. Basketball ends in June. Then, nothing.

Summer is painful. The NFL Europe is defunct. We don’t get coverage of the CFL (Canadian Football League) –trust me, in the summer, I will watch it. Arena Football just does not cut it for me – although I do watch it out of desperation. I even watch replays of the previous season’s games on the NFL Network. Yea, it’s a sickness, I know.

I get a dose of what’s to come with the Combine and the Draft. Then more nothing. I wait.

I wait for irrelevant Pre-Season games. I wait for the contract holdouts. Then the final roster cuts. The call to enter the Fantasy Football Leagues. So I long for the return of Chris Berman and Tom Jackson calling the highlights on ESPN. I long for Hank Williams Jr. and the Monday Night Countdown. The double headers on Sunday. Sunday Night games, Thursday Night Games. And of course, College Football Saturdays.

What I love most about College Football – every week matters. Each season is fantastic. Last year no team finished undefeated – who gets to play in the National Championship Game? What a great season this was – who gets to represent the Big 12? The Big 12 – what drama, 5 team ranked in the top 15 at one point- Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State , Mizzou, - and you saw how that played out. Texas beat OU, Texas Tech beat Texas, but OU blewout Texas Tech, so who gets to play for the Big 12 Championship . . . . .

The SEC was packed. If you come out of the SEC unscathed, you’re pretty much playing for the national championship (#2 Florida v #1 Alabama). FANTASTIC! Oregon State upsets USC in the PAC-10. There were some many compelling stories and performances.

Then Bowl Season for the FBS Football Bowl Subdivision comes around and totally dilutes the importance of the regular season. Many people advocate having a playoff like in 1-AA (or the FCS -Football Championship Subdivision as it is now called). At least there is a goal, an endpoint in a playoff system. With the endless Bowl games, the only goal is to devalue the meaning of the regular season games.

There was a point when the bowl games that mattered were the Sugar, Fiesta, Orange, and Rose Bowl. You also had other major bowl games such as the Citrus and Cotton Bowls. Now, the list seems endless.

In the 1999-2000 season, there were 18 bowl games, with one game played before Christmas, two on Christmas Day, and then continuing till the 4^th of January for the National Championship game.

the list: Sugar, Fiesta, Rose, Orange, Citrus, Cotton, Holiday, Motor City, Sun, Alamo, Peach, Liberty, Gator, Outback, Mobile, Insight.com, Oahu, and Aloha

For the current season, 2008-2009, that number has almost doubled with 35 bowls, with such notables as the Chick-fil-A Bowl, Papa Johns.com Bowl, Poinsettia Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, matter of fact here’s the complete list:

Eagle Bank Bowl, Chick-fil-A Bowl, Papa Johns.com Bowl, Poinsettia Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl, Pioneer Las Vegas Bow, R + L Carriers’ New Orleans Bowl, San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl, Motor City Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, Champs Sports Bowl, Emerald Bowl, PetroSun Independence Bowl, Valero Alamo Bowl, Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl, Texas Bowl, Pacific Life Holiday Bowl, Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, Brut Sun Bowl, Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl, Insight Bowl, Outback Bowl, Konica Minolta Gator Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Rose Bowl presented by Citi, Fed Ex Orange Bowl, AT&T Cotton Bowl, Autozone Liberty Bowl, AllState Sugar Bowl, International Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, GMAC Bowl, and of course the BCS National Championship Game.

I got issues!! Ok . . . .

• I’m from Texas, but the Texas Bowl has to go. There’s already the Cotton Bowl.
• Aloha or Oahu Bowl- choose one. The games are in the same stadium, in a double header!
• What is so International about a game between Buffalo (8-5) and Connecticut (7-5) played in Toronto?
• Motor City Bowl? Give the money it takes to put this on as well as the naming rights money the Auto industry seeking a bailout.
• Meineke Car Care – seriously? They make enough money from changing oil and replacing brakes?
• How big are St. Petersburg, Shreveport, Birmingham, Boise, Fort Worth, El Paso
• Somebody is really going to El Paso? For real?
• At least Citi was able to say, Rose Bowl presented by Citi!

Here are some of the other names over the years that shouldn't have been Bowls either:

Insight.com, Micron PC, Humanitarian, Music City (99-00), Carquest, Copper, Independence, (95-96)

A look at the names of the Bowl Games tells who or what is to blame for this sacrilege. If you have enough money you can get the naming rights to a Bowl (of Stadium in any case – another issue for another day) or you can just CREATE a Bowl if you feel so inclined. Not that I’m a hard traditionalist, but enough already.

I’m going to make it simple :

• if you have lost 3 games or more, then you should not be in a bowl game.
• If you are 1 game over .500 – a 6-5 record, why are you even wasting everyone’s time. In 2001 Univ of North Texas went to the New Orleans Bowl game with a 5-6 record (albeit a Sun Belt Conference record of 5-1). They won their conference, but my question is: does every conference deserve to have a bowl game?
• If there is more than one game in the same stadium or city, then there is a problem:
• Aloha and Oahu Bowl: same stadium
• Florida Citrus Bowl : Capital One Bowl ,Champs Sports Bowl – same stadium
• Phoenix: Fiesta Bowl, Insight Bowl
• New Orleans: New Orleans Bowl, Sugar Bowl
• Dallas: Fort Worth might as well be Dallas - Yes to an Armed Forces Bowl, just not in Fort Worth, Cotton bowl

In 2000, there were 13 teams with 5 or more losses, 6 of them lost 6 games..

So I humbly beg you, College Football Powers That Be, please Lay It Down to some of these extraneous Bowl games.

Sometimes I duck fast, sometimes I duck quick

The journalist has good aim, but Bush is quicker!!



I give it up to the journalist, it takes a nice set of cohones to do this. But he'll pay for it dearly.
I know that the official stance of the US Government is no torture . . . but I think they are about the F-k this dude up. Waterboarding . . . Bush had a vendetta against Saddam because of his dad.

Unfortunately for you my friend, Bush will LAY YOU DOWN!

Public nuisance

This is what happens when you don't take your medication . . . To all public nuisance, such as this uncouth girl, Lay it Down!

Illinois Gov Rod Blagojevich

This is too easy . . . and too obvious. So for the sake of brevity, please Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, just Lay It Down!

Secret Millionaires

I just finished watching the first episode of Secret Millionaires, a new reality/documenatary show on Fox. The premise of the show is that millionaires leave behind their life of luxury for week and live undercover at a poverty/welfare level. With cameras and a production crew in tow, they go in search of people for whom they can give a gift to better their lives. They must give a minimum of $100,000 to someone who needs it. For the week, they are fully immersed in their new identities. At the end of the week, the reveal their true identities, gift check hand, to the people they have chosen to be benefactors to.

I have placed Reality TV in the Narcissism Box. I abhor those who try to mask this vehicle as something other than a self-serving opportunity to promote themselves in some fashion. I approached this show the same way. However, it surprised me. I have only watched the first episode, and it made me a little emotional. I normally maintain a certain amount of detachment. But this show drew me in.

While watching the show I went through a number of emotions. First was cynicism. Before I watched the show, I was skeptical about the premise. This seemed like a situation in which the rich and wealthy get to feel good by dropping a few dollars to the underprivileged. And the producers get to make money off of it, much like the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. These millionaire benefactors will live this life for a week, be touched by the people they meet, give a token gift, and then return to their normal lives. With each passing month they will forget. Like when you are in church and hear a great sermon and are moved by it. You vow to make a change but with each passing hour after church, that feeling dissipates. That lifestyle or mindset changes becomes a faint memory by the time you return to church the next weekend.

I then felt empathy for the people that the millionaires met. These were people who were hard up. In the first episode the father and son stated that [they have always believed the poor or down and out were in their situation because they were ignorant, uneducated, or lazy]. Instead they came to realize that life is not always fair. One woman was working to get back on her feet after living homeless for over a year. She fell while working and fractured discs in her back. Unable to meet her medical expenses, her house and possessions were repossessed. Then there was the woman who ran a shelter out of her home for anyone who needed it, with money from her social security income. A kid said that prior to coming to the shelter, he and his mother lived in their van for over a year. Each situation the millionaires on the show encountered were just as touching.

Next came anger. Anger at the rich and spoiled in their indulgences. The excesses I see on TV or read about started to disgust me. I’m not talking about living well or enjoying the fruits of your success. I’m talking about spending over a million dollars to build a pool and grotto so you can compete with what Hugh Hefner has (Yes, I’m talking about you Gilbert Arenas). I think about the MTV Cribs shows, the opulence of the rich and famous.

Then guilt. Although I am not as rich as the millionaires, some of my behaviors are no different than theirs. Unlike some of these millionaires, I don’t think that those that are destitute are necessarily in their current situation because they deserve to be –because of something they have or have not done, because they cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I could volunteer more of my time, forgo many of the useless and valueless luxuries to provide necessities for those who desperately need them.

Joy. I felt joy for the folks that received the blessings. Life throws boulders your way sometimes. And it can be very difficult to get back up after being knocked down. I shared in the joy of the recipients of the gifts – receiving a providential gift. It restores faith in the human spirit. Too often we think that everyone is out for number one. But in the show, the people who receive the gifts truly deserve them. They are the types of people who give of themselves first, who open doors to the homeless, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. They are the people who will be first in line in Heaven. The Salt of the Earth, for whom the Beatitudes were spoken.


My final thoughts

The show aims to do good, but it is inevitably flawed. Much like a black-tie fundraising event. The fundraiser event spends a ton of money to raise a ton of money, but only a small fraction goes to the cause for which the money is being raised. The overhead costs of putting on the function eats away a big chunk of the money. Their largesse would go a much longer way without the pomp and circumstance.

Do the TV execs plan to share of the ad revenue with the deserving destitute? Or do they just plan to milk our viewership (which converts to the ad revenue) by tugging on our heartstrings.

It is reality TV. There are cameras following the millionaires around. People put on their best behavior in front of cameras. I question the authenticity of what we see. Not necessarily the veracity, but are the emotions always genuine. How many times were scenes re-shot because they did not capture the right angle? What about the scripting? By now most people know that a certain amount of “reality TV” is scripted.

The show’s premise is not new. But I do laud the attempt to bring light to those on the fringes of our society. So I won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. I’ll keep some of my reservations in my back pocket.