5 reasons we need more college football bowl games
By John Buhler
College football already has an insane amount of bowl games. You know what? We need more bowl games, and here are five reasons this needs to happen.
College football already has so many bowl games at the FBS level. There are so many that people question if it’s a real game or their friend is just pulling their leg.
Almost every team that wins six regular season games gets invited to one of several meaningless bowl games. Why not expand it to be more inclusive? Here are five reasons the world needs more bowl games.
5. For some bad/rebounding programs, getting to a bowl is a huge deal
Having more holiday season bowls means that more 6-6 or even 5-7 teams will be extending their season a bit to play in December or January. Depending on how a regular season shakes out, some 6-6 teams don’t get a bowl bid. Other years, like 2016, 5-7 teams like the Mississippi State Bulldogs get to go bowling to round out the slate.
By adding more bowls, this gets more teams that are hovering around .500 the opportunity to play another game after the season ends. Obviously, the NCAA should use the APR and reward 5-7 teams with good grades and academic standing to play in these bowls.
Let’s just say, for example, that a school better known for its academics than its football prowess goes 5-7. Most of the time, these schools don’t have the type of players that will be competing on NFL Sundays for a living. Some of these kids will never get to play in an NFL stadium in their lifetime.
A random bowl between 6-6 and 5-7 teams at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara may not matter to most people outside of those schools. The television ratings would be horrible and the optics would look like a New York Jets at San Francisco 49ers game.
There may be a senior that joined a 1-11 program his freshman year. If his team worked hard in the classroom and got a former dumpster fire of a program to 5-7, why can’t his team go bowling?