Bowl Game Total At An All-Time High
Late last week the NCAA announced the endorsement of two new Division I FBS Bowl Games that brings the total of games for the 2010 season to 35. For those of you doing the quick math, that’s 70 bowl teams out of 120 in Division I FBS. It’s almost like everyone gets a trophy!
Six wins gets you in. You can expect a lot of 6-6 teams fighting for bowl titles this year.
The International Bowl in Toronto bit the dust but the NCAA has sanctioned two new bowls as replacements. The NCAA proudly announced the addition of the Dallas Football Classic and the Pinstripe Bowl which will be played at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx. There could have been more bowls added to the schedule but the NCAA turned down a few entries. Among those considered and rejected were The Cure Bowl in Orlando and the Christmas Bowl, which would have been played in Los Angeles.
Perhaps even more amusing than the addition of two bowl games to next year’s schedule is the new titles that some of the old bowls will have. Here are some of the gems that you’ll see on this year’s schedule:
The Advo Care V100 Independence Bowl (and you thought Poulan Weedeater was a mouth full)
The Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl (Franco-American wasn’t available?)
The Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (is this a Cause-related project or a marketing move?)
The Maaco Bowl Las Vegas (are they franchising Maaco Bowls like CSI?)
What else can be said? Until a viable playoff system is in place, there should be more and more of this. With conference expansion and realignment looking like a near term reality, the bowl system might end up imploding and from there it’s anyone’s guess what the new landscape of the postseason will look like in College Football.
Pinstripe Bowl Details Unveiled
The bowl once called the ”Yankee Bowl” has been unveiled. Details for the Pinstripe Bowl have been announced.
The first annual New Era Pinstripe Bowl will take place on December 30, 2010 and will be played at Yankee Stadium. The contest will feature the #3 Big East team against the #6 Big 12 team (excluding BCS teams) and will be televised by ESPN. The first football game scheduled for Yankee Stadium will take place this season when Notre Dame plays Army (of nearby West Point) on November 20. Future dates for the bowl have not been scheduled yet, but it was announced Tuesday that the game would always be scheduled between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
If the game had been held this past bowl season, Rutgers and Texas A&M would have been the participants.
News of the new bowl game begs the question, “Have we already reached the point where there are too many bowls?” We regularly have six win teams reaching bowl games. Some teams come into a bowl game with a 6-6 record, have lost their bowl game and finished the year with a losing record. Almost every team in Division I-A schedules a Division I FCS team in hopes of an easy win and an easier path to bowl qualification.
The Pinstripe Bowl won’t suffer much because it enters the Bowl Parade with enough clout to schedule a good matchup. Considering that the NY Yankees are involved, it shouldn’t be difficult to keep the Pinstripe Bowl matchup strong year in and year out. The growing glut of bowls will certainly affect the lower tier bowls that will end up scraping to come up with bowl eligible teams come December. This is not moving big time college football any closer to a playoff. It’s only adding to the number of hands that will be in the pot if a playoff system is ever created.