So the NCAA has put on hold adding any new games until at least the 2019 season at the earliest.
Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Austin were all preparing to add games this year on top of the current ones.
Frankly my #Hottake is to say F that. There is no such thing as too many bowls, or too much football.
I will not be happy until every single FBS team is in a post season game against a similarly performing foe. Watching 0-12 Kansas play 0-12 UCF last year could have been one of the best moments of the season, those kids are absolutely as competitive as anyone else and they would have left everything on the field to get that one win.
So what if its the week before Christmas at 8pm on a Tuesday, was there something else ESPN should have been showing instead, maybe the same Sports Center for the 3rd time in a row?
So long as ESPN continues to want to foot the bill for the events(and despite the title sponsor ESPN does have a controlling interest in most of the lower bowls) then I say let them play. This isn't reducing the prestige of the NY6 games, Tulane and WMU going at it in South Florida isn't going to be confused for the Orange Bowl, its just another game we get to enjoy that is absolutely meaningful to its participants and thus worth enjoying and made better for it.
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I won't lie, when starting to read the headline, I was getting excited that the ncaa was actually doing something to unc. Bummer.
But hey we get to keep going to games in GREAT locations in December like El Paso, Birmingham, Shreveport, Detroit and Boise!! Who wants to go to Austin and Charleston.
How the "Sun" Bowl has survived this long is truly one of life's mysteries.
Somehow, I find myself watching the Sun Bowl every year. Hey, look, it's a dessert and it's snowing and Miami's players look really cold. Cool.
I loved this year's Sun Bowl. I just don't like it when Tech has to go.
It's a dessert? Cake or pie?!?!?!?
/s, really couldn't help myself there
Charleston bowl would be really cool for everyone involved. But depending on where they do it, it could create horrendous traffic before and after the game. Excellent example of an older city that was thoroughly unprepared for it's eventual size and too historical to make dramatic changes to make it better.
Supposedly it was gonna be at The Citadel, which makes sense, relatively easy to make it look full, but yeah having spent a week there in Feb. it could have been a nightmare.
Annapolis is only slightly better since the stadium is away from the downtown and a bit more suburban.
It would be played at the Citadel.
The Beamer Bowl at Murray State!
The system currently has a bias toward the big schools and conferences, who can get invited to a bowl game without a winning record. I think the line to too many bowl games had already been crossed when this exception was allowed. Why draw an arbitrary line here?
There's always a couple of bowls that become defunct every year. By doing a three year ban, this will allow the natural progression of things to walk the number of bowls back a bit, without forcing any of the organizing committees out of the bowl business if they want to stay in. Then in three years they can revisit where things stand and decide to continue the moratorium or allow expansion again.
I'd be onboard with this if the bowls would do away with putting the participating schools on the hook for a guaranteed allotment of (generally terrible) tickets. Bowl games offer programs diminishing returns as you slide down the bowl ladder, to the point that most schools actually lose money in the existing structure. Opening up bowls to more .500 and below teams is just going to carry that many more untenable mandates for athletic departments that probably don't have the extra cash to go around.
I think that is a reasonable complaint of the schools and conferences, but if I recall the ACC even got the numbers negotiated down when they did their last round of Bowl order reshuffling.
Remember when going to a bowl actually used to mean something?
pretty sure the hoos don't
Yeah fuck it having value as even a reward for the kids. In a world where everyone points out just how little fo the money is diverted to the athletes the one real tangible reward that is one the table(a week in a new place, a bag full of swag and gifts, and one more chance for glory) absolutely should be curtailed.
Is the meaning of bowls as reward for groups of men who dedicate themselves and work harder than just about most of us ever will insufficient?
EDIT: And no I don't remember when there were only a few as long as I have followed the sport there have been at least 30 Bowls, I have no intrinsic attachment to some artificial restriction of the amount of the sport I can enjoy or meaningful games that can be played to settle discussions of who is better than who or which conference is best.
Participation trophies for the win!
That is a perfectly acceptable opinion to have, but you also cant say that players should get a nicer compensation package for what they do as well, Bowls represent that opportunity but wont if we restrict them artificially.
Didn't think I would be in minority in thinking that I don't give two shits about 50 teams playing in the postseason. The postseason should be earned, that's what it is in every other sport. Yeah, okay, we get more football if everyone plays more, but do you see how many people actually attend the Car Care Bowl? Like 50. It's sad and pathetic.
I'll take the extra practice and experience that comes with bowl games, any day.
As a Hokie fan, I agree, but as a football fan, I don't care about watching other teams' extra practice and experience if they suck.
Conversely though have you seen how many people tuned in?
The Go Daddy Bowl for instance had Ga Southern and Bowling Green, got 2.5mil, the Royals and Mets rematch on Opening Day only drew 2.8mil. While 20 other Bowls had at least 3 mil not even counting the NY6.
If we tolerate empty ball parks for months on end, why not mostly empty football stadiums for 3 weeks?
Because it makes the sport look bad. That Ga Southern vs Bowling Green game featured two of the best offenses in the country, with head coaches headed to bigger schools, from areas where football is a big deal. Majority of low-tier schools or teams who had a bad year wouldn't draw anywhere close to that. Not to mention the fact that poorly attended games place a huge financial burden on the schools.
Baseball is really, really boring and is dying out anyways. They can feature half-empty stadiums because people are genuinely surprised when they notice that baseball is still a thing and no one expect big crowds there anyways.
Looking at the numbers from Baseball-Reference.com, MLB total attendance was 73,719,340. 73 million people attending baseball games throughout the year. The average game attendance was 30,361, with 81 home games per team, approximately. In terms of filling up stadiums, baseball averaged %70 percent stadium capacity through 2015. On any given day in the baseball season, approximately 455 thousand people attended MLB games, assuming there were no off days on that given day. Based on these numbers, I don't think baseball is dying out.
So I was just having some fun at baseball fans' expense there, but I would actually be curious to see the real growth numbers from the mlb. It's certainly felt like it's been dying out for as long as I can remember, and I think it long ago lost its status as the premier American sport to football, but it still seems to be going strong. Living in DC I've noticed people take an interest in baseball the last couple years which I don't ever recall seeing in my lifetime. It still seems like a sport on the decline, but I'll be the first to admit my evidence is mostly anecdotal.
(And to my original point, baseball can get away with showing half-filled stadiums because they've traditionally featured games during work hours and at odd times, it's kind of the norm; not so much in football where the vaunted "atmosphere" is such a huge part of the game.)
Well, part of it has to do with the number of games, but the total amount of ballpark visitors doesn't lie.
Again, overall population growth as well as increases in number of games affects these numbers but this doesn't look like a dying sport.
The %of metro area and %of ballpark capacity lines do a good job of correcting for this.
Look at that, hard evidence. Comparing overall attendance is definitely really hard, as football as a fraction of the total attendance but more than double the per-game total. I think that looking at stadium numbers probably favors hard-core fandom over total cultural permeance, but it's certainly not the worst placeholder measurement. The %capacity line makes a strong case, thanks for pointing these out.
Why do we have to tolerate anything? Why not just show good football?
where else would be get plays like this...
via GIPHY
If teams were required to use trick plays like this I just might watch
If you watched the Miami Beach Bowl between WKU and USF you might have thought trick plays were mandatory. That game was wild.
Because people have different definitions of what constitutes "good" football and thus what should be shown/played.
Why can't, instead of putting a hold on new bowls, just ever 2 to 5 years the NCAA look at the attendance and revenue for the locations for bowl games and if it doesn't meet a certain revenue percentage based on projected figure then the bowl will be relocated to a new Venue. Not like the lower tier bowl games need large stadiums and it could create an interest to know a bowl in coming to your area and boost the local economy for a small period.
Because this hurts the cities more than it hurts the teams/conference. The city spent time on resources, creating jobs in the area to host the bowl, plus the revenue to all the local vendors from the "fans" that did show are all good things to that city.
The city shouldn't be punished because State College and State University has poor fanbases.
I will not be happy until every single FBS team is in a post season game against a similarly performing foe. Watching 0-12 Kansas play 0-12 UCF last year could have been one of the best moments of the season, those kids are absolutely as competitive as anyone else and they would have left everything on the field to get that one win.
What, the NCAA is trying to rob us of opportunities to see something like this in a bowl game? More football is not always GOOD football.
Sure, but fewer Bowls is not conversely the answer to it either.
Nobody who saw the Cotton Bowl with Bama and MSU could have objectively called the 38-0 whipping a good game either.
you mean like a Russell Athletic Bowl where the media picks a punter as the MVP?
I'm OK with a punter getting MVP, I just hope there's more football there as well.
See: 2008 Champs Sports bowl.
Gotta be the cringiest signature on TKP.
http://xkcd.com/
Says the guy with the signature of the no longer used chant because of its "cringiness"
For the record, I'm all about bringing it back... but really?
I don't mind additional bowls as long as they don't start interfering with the better bowl time slots. I think the bowl schedule is ridiculous as it is; We wait 4 weeks to watch the post season only to discover there are good games that overlap each other.
When you're considering teams with losing records for bowl games, you've gone too far.
I'd rather have too few than too many bowl games.
Note to NCAA:
This horse left the barn a LONG time ago.
This is true, but you might as well close it now, while there are a few nags left.
Thank god.... too many bowls as it is. Should cut it down by 10 imho, but I know they wont for obviou$ rea$on$
The hell is the NCAA gonna do with $3?
Nothing most likely. That's kinda how they work.
Give it to UNC for their legal troubles.
I mean if we want Bowls to have meaning we should cut every single bowl that isn't involved in the Playoff. So as of now 3, with an 8 team play off the 7 total Bowls.
Everything else is just at its heart an Exhibition game and irrelevant to crowning a championship. So it really just comes down to how many Exhibition games anyone wants to see.
I would totally be for cutting out all the bowls and just keeping the ones for the playoffs, if that means expanding it top 8 or 16 teams making the playoffs, then so be it. Since the playoffs have been created, thats all I focus on VT striving to get
If the FBS just copied the FCS then the number jumps to 24 teams and 23 total games as well there are also as of 2016 roughly the same number of FCS and FBS programs, though the time required for anything more than a 16 team field is a major concern as well.
Well considering there is about a 4 week gap before the playoffs now, I think they could easily go to top 16 at least, adding 2 weekends of games, still giving all teams about 2-3 weeks to prepare for the first round of the playoffs
8 teams is my ideal but 16 would be nice too, Begin 2 weeks after Conference title games, concurrent with any other Bowls and ends when the title game happens now.
That's my take, too, at the beginning of the season. But when we're 4-6 with two weeks to go, I'm really excited just to be bowl eligible.
Let's add one more bow; The Clorox Toilet Bowl
Last Place SEC vs. UVA
Location: I'm taking nominations
Detroit, but they already have a bowl. So, Cleveland?
Newark, New Jersey.
Oooh, good one.
What about Charlottesville, VA?
Not enough fans.
Isn't that kinda the point of the toilet bowl?
He said toilet bowl not the entire cesspool every toilet dumps into
When searching for an ideal location for this bowl game I searched "toilet city" on Google. This was the first hit:
City of Charlottesville: Toilet Rebates
Couldn't tell if this post was in /s or not, but I think I would pass on more bowls. If these locations would be great for a bowl, maybe the bowls should bid for a spot. You could cap the amount of bowls, and have them fight over which ones are going to be included.
I like the idea, but with schools having to purchase ticket allotments, why do I feel like it's the athletic departments who would end up paying the cost?
That could be part of the bidding, make it so it doesn't impact the schools negatively.