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.