Sports Thread #1 for 12/30/08: Another, Albeit Passionate, Pathetic Attempt To Justify Bowl Games

Photo from google.com

Add Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated to the list of people not seeing the big picture with why bowl games, in the total whole scheme of things, are antiquated and assisted in the shameless money making corporations of college presidents and the NCAA.

Mandel's lets compulsive nostalgia from his Northwestern days fuel his argument of why bowl games matter:

In 1995, I was a sophomore at Northwestern when the Wildcats, which hadn't posted a winning record in 25 years, inexplicably rose up to go 10-1 and earn their first Rose Bowl berth in 47 years. Those of you old enough to remember it don't need me to rehash the details. For those of you who weren't, I would describe the shock level as akin to Appalachian State beating Michigan -- if Appalachian State had completely stunk the year before and also gone on to beat Notre Dame, Penn State and Wisconsin.

Obviously, the excitement level on our previously apathetic campus soared with each mounting win, but when Michigan upset undefeated Ohio State over Thanksgiving weekend to send Northwestern to Pasadena -- things went to a whole other stratosphere. Suddenly, we were all on the phone with travel agents (this was pre-Expedia) trying to find flights to L.A. We lined up for hours in the biting cold to buy tickets and we bought up T-shirts faster than they could print them.

Now, it's not a bad thing whenever a writer talks about his past by showing his love of the sport. And you can't question that about Mandel, who clearly loves the sport. And to his credit, unlike BCS accepting hack Ivan Maisel of ESPN, he presents a different argument for while bowls still matter, by listening Pat White's father celebrating his son's fourth consecutive and final bowl win or the close game Boise State and TCU played against each other.

But Mandel still conflates the idea that people won't care about these bowls anymore, which just isn't true. People know that the players will play in anything when all is said in done, and they will treat their bowls games as their own Championship Games or Super Bowl. That is certainly the case for a senior like White, who of course has placed in much more glamorous bowl games in his record setting career at West Virginia.

At the end of a day, a game is a game.

Family will come and see their sons, brothers, nephews or cousins no matter what. (And in possible rare, VERY RARE cases in the future if it happens, daughters, sisters, and nieces. Wow that's a liberal thought, isn't it?). The same with friends, alumni, avid fans, and anybody else.

And those games, from the more valued New Year's Day Bowls to the, sigh, Texas Bowl, will still exist if a playoff existed. An eight team playoff healed this year wouldn't result in no bowl games for BYU or Arizona or even Notre Dame unless the BCS presidents (namely in the SEC) were so pissed that their perfect plan of making max profits went out of the window, causing to hold players, coaches, and the college football nation ransom by demanding either all bowls or none at all.

I say, let them try doing just that, I dare them. Because it would clearly expose the obvious fact to most of us: that they care for their pockets than they do for fixing the problem.

That painful fact is what gets me irate about even this column from Mandel, who as I said before, at least didn't spew the same "A playoff would still cause controversy and devalue the regular season" BS brought up every year by the likes of Maisel. They are fully cognizant that these presidents don't give a damn about doing what's right. Of course no system is going to be perfect, and whether people liked it or not, Boise State would have a claim of not making the Top 8 this season, regardless of their defeat to TCU showing that they weren't on say, even Utah's level.

But everyone knows the real reason why people feel this way about these bowls games, no matter if its the Rose Bowl or the incongruously named PapaJohns.com Bowl. They will still leave with the lingering question, "Is this team, in this year's case either Oklahoma or Florida, truly the Champions of College Football?"

A question that will continue to remain, year, after year, after year, until someone has the guts, whether President-elect Obama or someone else, to bring major reform to a broken system.