Mediocrity Bowls
by Bob Barr
Issue 98 - December 26, 2007

Life used to be so simple; so un-complicated; so straightforward. You had four bowl games — the Rose, the Cotton, the Sugar and the Orange. And you had eight teams — generally the best in the country — playing in those four post-season bowl games. They were all held on the same day — New Year's Day, unless Jan. 1 fell on a Sunday, in which case the games would be held the next day. The final poll of the top 10 teams would then be released; not 20 or 25 "top" teams, just 10. Back in those days, everybody was not a winner.

Now, we have not four, but 32 post-season bowl games. That's 64 teams, including many you've probably never heard of, playing in cities you'd never want to visit by choice, in bowls with names that read like chambers of commerce membership drive lists.

There's the "Meineke Car Care" Bowl on Dec. 29 in Charlotte. And who wouldn't give their right arm for the chance to watch two teams with four-loss records battle it out in the "GMAC Bowl" on Jan. 6 in beautiful Mobile, Ala.? For the internationally minded, there's the "International Bowl" on Jan. 5 in warm, sunny Toronto, where you can watch two teams with 7-5 records slog through four quarters of world-class football.

Mediocrity reigns. There are, for example, more than half a dozen teams on the bowl roster that sport non-winning, regular-season records. UCLA boasts a 6-6 record and will be in the Las Vegas Bowl. Oklahoma State (also 6-6) "won" the right to meet Indiana in the mis-named "Insight Bowl." The list goes on and on.

Nearly lost amongst all the mediocre teams playing in mediocre cities in mediocre bowl games, are some truly excellent teams fully deserving of playing in what used to be considered exclusive bowl games. But, with the exception of the BCS National Championship game, few of these nearly three dozen football games stretching over nearly three weeks, from Dec. 20 to Jan. 7, will result in any lasting glory. Even the BCS championship game — which chooses its participants based on an algorithm apparently developed by Rube Goldberg — has seen its technologically crafted reputation tarnished considerably this year.

The solution? Take a cue from Paris Hilton and return to the "Simple Life." Limit the football polls to the top 10 teams only. Schedule only four bowl games. Allow only the best teams with the best records to play in them; and hold all four games on the same day.

Some may fret this will result in unfairly casting into the unemployment lines those Brainiacs who have given us the current BCS mess, along with all those officials who will not be making bad calls in the other bowl games. However, there is a solution: put the BCS folks in charge of the presidential primaries.

Taking the BCS bureaucrats and making them responsible for the PCS — the Presidential Championship Series — will be a match made in heaven. After all, modern college football and contemporary presidential politics have much in common. Both are so complex the average fan has great difficulty following the players and the scores. In both "professions" true substance rarely outweighs showmanship and bluster. And, of course, both NCAA football and presidential politics now revolve around money. Lots and lots of money.

Therein lies the secret to understanding why we have so many bowl games in so many cities with so many teams over so many days. All total, the 64 college football teams that will be playing in the post-regular season, will take back to their campuses the astonishing sum of $245 million. (If expanding the field to 128 from 64 would increase that take, you can bet the NCAA wouldn't waste a single time out before finding 32 more cities and 64 more teams anxious to prove they are not as mediocre as their records suggest.)

The transition from BCS to PCS would be seamless. All the candidates in both major parties understand already the importance of raising the Big Bucks; more than $375 million has been raised by the lot of them thus far. The time-frame for the presidential primaries is already hopelessly complex and accelerated, just as the bowl schedule has moved earlier and earlier into December; so the BCS folks would have an easy transition there, too.

And who knows, just like LSU vaulted over Georgia and four other teams to reach the BCS championship game, in our new PCS system, we just might get to see a Ron Paul-Dennis Kucinich matchup next fall.

Former congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr practices law in Atlanta. Web site: www.bobbarr.org.