Bowl Retirement

I don't know how you can say this

For those who think the CFP is a good thing, well it isnt..its still a Mythical title when the Conference Champions of one of the top 2 leagues in the country doesnt even qualify and not just once but 3 times..its a sham a scam and this system is desinged to favor the SEC

We finally have a real way to determine an actual national champion and we're still unhappy about this? Should we go back to playing bowl games only where the top teams rarely play each other? Seems to be a justification to make the CFP go to 6-8 teams rather than get rid of it

The Big Ten didn't have a top 4 team this year

I know this is pie-in-the-sky fantasy, but wouldn’t it be cool if Michigan could schedule its own Jan 1 bowl game anywhere, against any agreeing school after the regular season played out?

Sure, maybe they’d have to reserve a facility.  Somewhere warm.  I haven’t worked any of this out obviously.   Maybe we could play Florida every year, like Groundhog Day.  

You thought the Gator Bowl was an accomplishment that meant something? The one where we went 8-4, 9-3, or 7-5?

The only bowl games that have ever matter were the ones where you went because you were a champion or the ones where you played to become a champion. 

Want players to not risk millions of dollars by playing in an exhibition game? Great: support paying them, or at least support the school shelling out $ to insure them at a reasonable potential loss from injury. 

The bowls, as we know them today, are an anachronism propped up by TV money, tickets forced on the schools putting teams in them and the crazy ticket wholesalers who by and large probably lose money when they buy blocks of them even at discounted prices. There's impetus to continue them because everyone involved, except the players, are making money - lots of it.

Last year the Big Ten alone earned in the neighborhood of $100 million from bowls it participated in. Add around another $400 million for the other P5 conferences and another $2 or $3 million for each of, say, 5 other programs earning money off bowls and you've got an astonishing $600 million plus on the table in this game. Follow the money as they say. Bowls aren't going to go away.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2017/12/30/college-football-playoff-payouts-by-conference-for-2017-2018/#1b9510f62704

There's going to be an expanded playoff but it's not because fans are demanding it or the current system is flawed. It's because playoff expansion is likely to increase revenues. The one thing that might mitigate expansion is the Alston case. Fans should know about this (link below). It has the potential to affect the bottom lines of institutions involved in CFB in a negative way. I think it will impact decisions on CFB playoff expansion.

https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/09/04/alston-v-ncaa-trial-news-updates-ncaa-cost-attendance

If Altson v. NCAA ends up costing P5 programs money (and the calculus is complicated, read the link), my take is that it will dampen enthusiasm for expansion of the current CFP in the near term. Don't hold your breath for an eight team play-off as a way of saving the bowl system/making post season play more meaningful.   

Back in the day of "Rose Bowl or no bowl", yes, every bowl visit was precious because it meant you were Big Ten champ, playing for conference pride and maybe a poll vote as #1.  I guess you can blame the Big Ten for watering the bowl system down when the vote came to allow teams to go to bowls other than the Rose Bowl.

While today's bowls are tourism revenue generators for the host city, if you don't go to one, you still miss it.  The bowl season after Hoke's last team missed a bowl felt really weird.  Nothing to look forward to.  I went to the 2016 Outback Bowl and loved it.  First bowl I ever went to which is hard to believe given how long I've been a fan.

However, at the end of the day, I am more excited about attending a Big Ten championship game in Indy.  It feels more like the old days.  The stakes are high and you walk away a champion.

I've been to one bowl game, the 1991 Gator Bowl, after the 1990 season. We whipped Ole Miss and the Rebel Flag crowd something like 35-3. It was the opening game, in essence, for Desmond's Heisman trophy season. Definitely a great atmosphere that day - a cool front had moved thru Jacksonville, so it felt like October football back in the day when UM-MSU was always about the 2nd weekend in October.

As for these bowls, clearly teams are NOT winning (even with the extra practices) when they get stuck with the tickets that are given away. It's also not a great feeling losing bad to a rival on the last game of the season and then going bowling. I think that is part of the reason why people haven't bought our allotment. 

The one expectation I'd place as a coach is that ANY captain MUST agree in front of their teammates to play the bowl game, even if a lousy bowl in Shreveport. Don't commit to be captain unless you agree to play 13. 

On Saturday, I'll probably go about my usual weekend errands and check in on the score. Perhaps watch the 2nd half if we are doing well. I go to most home games each year so not as excited about a bowl game unless it was against a new team like LSU, that we haven't played before.

I was a freshman in the MMB in 1981 when we went to the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. As we had something like 350 band members for 248 spots, didn't make the bowl game cut but remember watching it on TV. That 1981 Team may have been Bo's biggest underachievers (home losses to Iowa and OSU) but at least finished with a bowl win. We were ranked #1 before losing the opener at Wisconsin. 

What really needs to happen is the bowls that can't show a profit (from the teams selling most/all of their allotment) need to be placed on probation after a few years and risk losing their spot. 

p.s. congrats for going to so many games. The worst ones I recall on TV were the BWW blowout under Hoke, RR's only bowl game and blowout, Lloyd's rout loss to UTenn after we choked the Big10 title with a home loss to Tressel in 2001, etc. 

College football has always been awesome.  The bowl system was flawed, but it was sort of like an aristocracy.  Your record got you into a good bowl game, but so did your pedigree as a program.   I'm guessing the term blue bloods* as applied to football came from this notion.  If you built a tradition of winning and being an excellent program you got the benefit of the doubt from the selection committee.  Was it a perfect system?   No.   But it was unique. 

The NFL sucks.  I only watch a couple of games a year and usually only if my fantasy team is doing well.  It exists for the sole purpose of gambling.   So hey,  let's ruin what makes college football special and copy the NFL's playoff system.  

*Evidently blue bloods applies to 8 teams?!

The playoffs need to only take conference champions. That should be every teams goal throughout the year. This means 4 conferences. Each team should play 10 conference games and the top 2 teams play in a quarterfinal game which is the CCG.

Bowls should just be fun games where teams who never would play each other get the chance to face off. 

These other bowls might not matter to you, but they are very meaningful to schools like EMU.

It depends on your perspective.

The problem is 6 wins shouldn't get you in a bowl game. It should be 7 for G5 and 8 for power 5. 6 wins for a power 5 should not be celebrated. You get 3 auto wins by scheduling cupcakes.

Also, I posted this in the Cal TCU thread that we got to do away with the corporate bowl names. It’s just stupid. Michigan played in that bowl game that was played last night but THREE names ago. No one gets excited about winning a bowl game with no tradition and with a stupid name. 

3 years from now: “hey we won the Cheez-It bowl 3 years ago!” “Which one is that again?” “You know the one that is called the Cheerios Bowl now, but it was the Frosted Flakes Bowl last year” “So it doesn’t exist anymore?” “No it does. Remember it used to be called the Motel 6 Bowl and before that the Cactus Bowl, and the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl; you know the Insignt Bowl.” “Wait which one did you win again exactly?”

My working theory on bowls:

If you were to expand the playoff to 24 teams (like D2), you could keep 12 of the best bowls and use them as consolation games for teams that get knocked out of the bracket. So if your team loses in the first round, you play another team that lost in the first round across the bracket from you in the Holiday Bowl; if you lose in the second round you play another second round team in the Alamo Bowl; lose in the third round and you play in the Peach Bowl, etc...

This way:

• Only playoff teams make good bowl games, thus bowl games become more special/rare to reward both the fans and teams on a successful season. 
• Bowl game matchups are between two good teams, so you don't have to worry about any "Minnesota vs Georgia Tech" matchups.
• It would still allow for on-campus playoff games in the early rounds.
• You could still play the late rounds of the playoff out through the New Year's Six bowls if you desired to and simply slot the rest of the bowls down. 

This doesn't solve the "NFL prospects sitting out" issue, but there isn't a clear solution to that problem and this idea changes the mentality of the game from being "this is a random exhibition game for no reason" to "here are two playoff teams that got knocked out, so let's celebrate their respective seasons." 

Well, ESPN owns the SEC Network and the right to broadcast the CFP.

The system is unfair and biased.  ESPN gives air time to chumps like Paul Finebaum, David Pollock, Tim Tebow, and hundreds of other turds so they can shamelessly schlep for the SEC - a thinly veiled ploy by ESPN to protect their interests.

Good lord, this place is insufferable during the offseason.

Yes, please tell us how you are done with the bowl season, an intensely private decision that nobody needed to know or care about.  It's like everyone here who claims they are going to cancel their season tickets; good.  Go for it.  Nobody but your close seatmates will care if you do so, but doing so quietly doesn't allow you virtue signal how "above it all" you are.  Guess what - you watching on television, buying the gear, and interacting with college sports means they'eve already won, and while you may feel like you are showing these players and coaches who don't care anymore how important it is, you aren't.  You're just attacking unpaid college athletes for not wanting to possibly injure themselves in a meaningless exhibition in front of 3/4 filled stadiums for people sitting at home.  Which is how it always was, but nobody cared about the health of athletes and those guys were tricking into believing that playing for the "honor" of fucking Wake Forest or Alabama or Michigan was worth it.

So please, don't go to bowl games.  It's fine.  But if it really bothers you so much, you should quit watching college sports at all, since if only NOW are you realizing that they are money-focused endeavors, then you're going to be in for a rough go of it.

Bowls would be great if they were limited to teams with at least 8 wins.

I miss the "magic" of the Rose Bowl that I grew up with in the 70's and 80's!  Maybe New Year's Day like it was.  Sugar Bowl or Cotton Bowl early, then Rose, closing with Orange Bowl with halftime show.  Was a great day of football!  

I too will add my opinion that nobody in their right mind should care about.

1) Argument 1: Other teams in bowls—aka “there are too many bowls”

—Pro: Watching EMU in the Camellia Bowl, those players certainly seemed happy to be there. It probably meant a lot to the seniors to have one last football game in their career. I don’t see how this hurts the OP or anyone else by “cheapening the meaning of bowls”. A tweak to reduce the number of bowls so that 7-5 EMU does not make it (e.g., 8 win cut off), that would be reasonable, but not sure that necessary. 

—Con: Whether it is financially worthwhile for EMU to go to bowls is a separate (and more valid) argument against. If EMU alumni boycotted the bowl because it is a kind of extortion and poor use of EMU dollars, that i could understand (caveat: I don’t know the Camellia Bowl’s financial set up, but I imagine it was a net loss for EMU athletics but i may be wrong).

2) Argument 2: Meeechigan in non-CFP/Rose bowls

—Pro: I like seeing Michigan football.

—Con: I guess OP would want to punish Michigan football teams that had a less than amazing season and didn’t make the CFP/Rose? I don’t see what would be accomplished by denying Jared Wangler one last football game even if in a “meaningless” Peach bowl?

3) This concludes my opinion which should be of little import to anyone else on this board. 

I look forward to the next thread comparing whether someone’s kid should accept early admit to Michigan versus early admit to the Bad Boy Mowers Bowl.    

For the 4 teams in the playoffs and OSU in the Grand-daddy Rose they are meaningful.

Yeah, our bowls suck because we cannot win the Big Ten.

If we were in playoff or the Rose people would be excited. 2nd 3rd 4th place bowls always suck.

Just like 70% of the last three weeks of NFL games suck because who wants to see out-of-the-playoff teams play each other? Cowboys Giants anyone? Lions Packers? Falcons vs Bucs?

Its sad bowl games are coming to this. I still think they are important and it’s great to win them but more and more people care less about them. Maybe they should just expand the playoffs and every team which doesn’t make it in is allowed 10 practices in December to give reps to the younger guys and bring them along 

heck Michigan could go to a place like Florida for a week of the practices and hold open practices for fans who want to travel that time of year and watch them a little like a bowl game 

I really do hope and believe they will expand the playoffs—and they really should do it at 16 or 20. They can make a lot of money on playoff games where people want to see if the MAC champs can pull an upset on the PAC 12. They could have the lower 8 seeds ply in a first round play, giving the top 12 seed a bye. That would allow the mid shots lime  Sun Belt and MAC to play in—or have a mid-major conference champ play a wildcard Major seed. Guarantee each conference gets a conference champ if they win 8-10 games, or just guarantee conference champs. Get sponsors for each round that normally name the bowls to name the rounds or get tiered advertising sales, etc.

Agree expand the playoff so there are more meaningful playoff games. If the bowls can’t survive, then be done with them. A 16 team playoff would solve a lot of issues

When Michigan eventually makes the playoffs, will you go to that Bowl?

I’m looking forward to this game just to see the younger players get a chance against decent competition.  It’ll be a nice little preview for next season.

We got the worse NY6 bowl game but it may be our punishment for getting blown out by OSU. I'll watch and root for Michigan I would like to see the playoffs expanded to 8 games. Keep the bowl games and the ones that don't survive can go extinct. If sub .500 teams are going to bowl games, then we just got too many of them.

Get off my lawn!

What does the CFP have to do with it? Do you really think we’d be more fired up for the Peach Bowl against Florida if the CFP games were just their old bowls?

I agree 100% with this post. The last bowl game I was excited about or cared about was the sugar bowl against vtech. I doubt I watch more than 2 bowls games this including the playoffs.  Btw, I haven't watched a single playoff game since they have became a thing.