Not Exactly Bowled Over

          I'm old enough to remember when there was a final four in college football. No, not a March Madness - type final four, but rather four big bowl games. They were the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and "the granddaddy of them all", the Rose Bowl. That's what they used to call the Rose Bowl. Why they called it "granddaddy" rather than a "grandmother" is beyond me. It was probably because Granddaddy, not Grandmother, spent all New Year's Day plopped on his sofa watching the 4 big bowl games.

          Yes, all four games were played on New Year's Day, back to back to back to back, and they all featured championship teams. The champion of the Southwest Conference was the host team for the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The champion of the Southeastern Conference hosted the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The PAC 10 and Big Ten Champions squared off in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and the Big Eight champion played the nation's top independent team in the Orange Bowl in Miami Beach, the fun and sun capital of the world (as it used to be described on the Jackie Gleason Show.)

          In the days of the four big New Year's Day bowl games, no one really cared about a so-called "national championship" in college football. In fact, for decades, the final college football poll was voted on in December, even before the New Year's Day bowl games were played. It didn't much matter who was voted number one in the last poll. What mattered was who won the Rose, the Cotton, the Sugar and the Orange.

          But there are now 34 bowl games, which means that a whopping 68 teams get to play in a post-season not-so-classic. These days a college football team does not even have to have a winning record to play in a bowl game. The UCLA Bruins, for example, played in the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Fight Hunger Bowl despite the fact that their win-loss record was 6-7, and they lost their last regular season game by a score of 56-0.

          In fact, every Division 1 college football team in America that had at least a .500 record during this past season got a bowl bid.

          Consequently, the post season college bowl games have now become the equivalent of kindergarten soccer teams. At the end of the season, everybody gets a trophy!

          Post-season bowl games these days not only feature mediocre teams. They also feature ridiculous names such as the Beef O' Brady Bowl (no doubt named after famous Notre Dame running back, Beef O' Brady), the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, the Tax Slayer Gator Bowl, the Chic-Fil-A Closed on Sundays Fried Peaches Bowl, the Martha White's Self-Rising Flour Googoo Cluster Music City Bowl, the Poulan Combination Weed Eater-Dust Buster Independence Bowl, and inexplicably, something called the Go Daddy.Com Bowl.

          Next year these post-season classics will be joined by the E-Harmony.Com Bowl, the Vegematic Popeil Pocket Fisherman Bowl, the Sarah Palin’s Alaska Bowl, and the Cialis Viagra Consult Your Doctor if This Game Lasts More Than Four Hours Bowl.

          Of course, this plethora of mediocre, silly-named bowl games should come as no surprise in our sports-crazed nation where 8-8 teams go to the NFL playoffs, half the teams in the NBA qualify for an endless series of best-of-seven round ball playoffs, and a third place finish in the Iowa Caucus with 15 percent of the vote means that you are a serious candidate for President of the United States.

          Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed to the sofa in my den.  The Corey B. Trotz NST For the People One Call That’s All Law Firm Bowl is about to come on the ESPN II Classic Fox Sports channel, as the University of California at Los Angeles at Kansas City-Las Vegas Fighting Ant Eaters (6-6) take on the Eastern Illinois Eleemosynary Institute of Optometry (E-I-E-I-O) Cornshuckers (4-8), featuring a halftime show starring Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett, the Morman Tabernacle Choir, and the entire cast of Glee.  It will be the perfect warm up to next week’s game 2 of the best-of-seven national college football championship series between Alabama and LSU.