You’ll have to excuse Kirk Herbstreit.
His not-so-well-thought-out rant on eliminating college football bowl games now that the College Football Playoff has expanded to 12 teams reveals his true colors.
After all, he works for ESPN, which is doling out billions for the television rights to the CFP. He’s a part of the college sports big business fraternity, where money talks and tradition walks. After all, college football is all about the elite teams now. There’s no room for pretenders or anyone wanting to crash the party reserved for the megastars.
“I think you eliminate the bowls,” Herbstreit said. “Nobody wants to play in them, don’t play in bowls. Just have the 12 teams. We’ll get excited about those, and if you want to add maybe five or six more bowls outside of that, then do five or six. … I’m a bowl guy. I’m a bowl junkie. But I’m tired of saying ‘bowls are fun.’ If nobody wants to play in them, don’t play in them.”
What is it? Eliminate all bowl games and leave the 12-team playoff as the sole remaining heir to the NCAA Division I (FBS) postseason. Or go ahead and play five or six meaningless bowl games so college football fans can have their bread and circus show while waiting for the expanded playoff games.
I suppose it was inevitable for such words to be uttered – even more so now with the emergence of the NIL/Transfer Portal Age, an effort to spread the wealth, er, offer crumbs to the poor and make them think they are being rewarded for making gobs of money for their schools.
It’s a new world order for college football, rather, big-time college football. But just so we know what’s really going on here, it’s not about – nor has it ever been about (in the modern age at least) – producing a level playing field in which the last can be first and the first might be last.
In the words of Lee Corso: “Not so fast, my friend.”
I will agree with Mr. Herbstreit on one thing: There are too many bowl games. In the mid-1990s, there were 18 bowl games. Nowadays, there are north of 40 of them. We’ll let Herbstreit tell the teams who played in them that, in the future, they won’t be playing in them because only 12 teams who qualify for the postseason will play after their final regular season game.
I will disagree with him on his belief that it is better to eliminate all bowl games and leave the playoffs as the only games in town. Let’s admit that Division I (FBS) is complicated with its synthesis of the CFP (in existence since 2014) and the existing bowl games.
Since the beginning of time, bowl games have been an important part of college football.
In the late 1970s, a major shift occurred when college football instituted a tier system that resulted in what we see now – Division I, Division I-AA (now FCS), Division II, and Division III. The only division without a playoff system was and is Division I (FBS).
Why was that? Because of the bowl games. Why kill the golden goose when players and fans enjoyed the dozen or so “postseason” games? And it’s true. Bowl games were what people looked
forward to between the third week of December and climaxing in the New Year’s Day games (Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl).
As a Penn State fan, I know I didn’t care what bowl game the Nittany Lions were invited to, I enjoyed watching. One of the greatest bowl games ever played was the 1989 Holiday Bowl (Penn State vs. BYU).
I wonder if you polled today’s players and asked them if they would rather play in a bowl game or a CFP game what their answer would be. Whatever the response would be, you can’t blame them for the actions of business people who have ruined amateur sports.
Today’s anti-bowl sentiment is a reflection of a new paradigm in college football, one that has been rooted in virtually everyone’s desire for an objective playoff system. It was tried (and failed miserably) first with the Bowl Alliance, then the BCS, and now the CFP. It was wrong to include Ohio State in 2014 (even though the Buckeyes won it all). It was wrong to include Alabama this past season (even though the Crimson Tide dethroned Georgia in the SEC Championship).
No, the only solution to the problem should have been addressed back in the 1970s. It wasn’t. It’s too late now.
