Health & Fitness
Poinsettia and Holiday Bowls, RIP
The march towards a college national championship means the eventual demise of non-BCS bowls, including the Poinsettia and Holiday Bowls.
Not too many years ago, New Year's Day was the best day of the year for college football fans like me. You could watch the 3 complete bowl games and peek at a few others along the way: the Tangerine Bowl, the Rose Bowl and finish it off with the Orange Bowl. And the match ups were typically of traditional inter-conference rivals and had a lot of interest, particularly for alums.
Nowadays, the BCS bowls are spread over a few weeks and this, frankly, dilutes any enjoyment of those games substantially. I loved to plan my New Year's Day around college football and my sister's 30 years running Rose Bowl party. Now the party only happens on those years that the Rose Bowl actually happens on January 1st. This year's match up hearkens back to the Rose Bowl tradition of the best of the Big 10 vs. Pac-whatever, but it is a fake. Neither Stanford nor Wisconsin is the best in their conferences.
The Rose Bowl was the "Grand Daddy" of them all as Keith Jackson used to say. But it has been dead for a few years already. It sold out early to the BCS and now it is a pale reflection of what it used to be. It gets to host the current version of the national championship game every few years -- the version of the national championship no one really wants. The rest of the time it's just another second tier bowl.
It's all driven by money, of course, provided by the ESPN and cable companies. It's not by accident that except for today's Sun Bowl, college football bowls are now broadcast on ESPN. And the sad demise of the traditional college bowl system is only half complete. That demise will see the end of all non-BCS bowls, including the Poinsettia and Holiday and even today's Sun Bowl.
The new Pac-12 network is another example of college football driving Cable subscriptions. It costs about $120/month to get the Pac 12 network on my cable provider, around $500 if you were able to start the subscriptions at the beginning of the season and stop them right after the end. In case you haven’t noticed, it takes subscriptions to at least three cable packages to get the Pac-12 network.
In the end, the traditional bowl system will just fade away. And the reason is that now having to play in a non-BCS bowl is an insult joyfully launched against the participating teams by every sports writer worth his or her salt. Bill Dwyre, editor of the LA Times couldn't have put it better this morning:
"Only five post-season games currently matter — the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta bowls and the BCS title game. The best of the best in college football deserve some post-season challenge and reward. The rest is window dressing, TV programming and a bow to the current mentality that, upon entering school, you give every kid a trophy so they all feel loved."
I used to enjoy watching the second tier bowl games featuring second tier football teams because I just love college football. I'm beginning to hate to admit it though.
