Top 5 Most Ridiculous Bowl Games

Tis the season for year end Top 10 lists, where people whose opinions we usually wouldn’t care about become fodder for talk shows and mundane time spent on the Internet. Since we (read: I) at Logical Betting like mundane time spent on the Internet, and like to talk rationality in sports, let’s spend some time on one of the most irrational things in all of sports: the current NCAA bowl system, which allows any half decent team the chance to say it played in a bowl. Note: Michigan and Notre Dame are NOT half decent teams. Hence, they can’t even make a bowl in a year where Temple and Middle Tennessee State are considered bowl worthy.

Therefore, I present to you the Top 5 most ridiculous bowl games of the ’09-’10 season. The criteria? In no particular order: matchup, location, sponsor, and miscellaneous. On your mark, get set, go!


5. The International Bowl (January 2nd, Toronto, CA) – South Florida v. Northern Illinois – One of count ‘em 5 bowls carrying on the New Year’s Day tradition by playing on January 2nd (I guess the NCAA forgot one comes before two), pits two teams no one cares about and probably won’t travel for to a country that could care less about football. Strong resume. Over/under on number of South Florida fans who travel from Miami to Toronto for New Year’s Eve to support their team: 5.5. Let’s see, sunshine and thousands of hot women on South Beach or snow and hundreds of old white men talking hockey…. hmmmmm. This game is probably top 3 material if it had a corporate sponsor. But to get back to this “5 bowls on Jan. 2” thing for a second… I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes thinking about how dumb that is and how that could have happened, and I still don’t have an answer. I’ve gone back to espn.com five times to double check my 2nd grade math, and it’s still 5. Hang on, let me check once more before we move on…. yep, still 5. Wow.

4. R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl (Dec. 20th, New Orleans) – UCF v. Rutgers, and St. Petersburg Bowl presented by Beef O’Brady’s (Dec. 19th, St. Petersburg) - Southern Miss. v. Middle Tennessee St. (tie) – I realized that the NCAA has two really dumb formulas they use in determining bowl games: A. Computers + Biased early year polls + Harris polling = National Champion. B. Corporate Sponsor + Location of Bowl game + 2 bad teams = Bowl game. Here is a fun stat: If you combine all the bowl games that are named for this formula, just the name of the place it is located (e.g., Texas Bowl), and just the name of a sponor (e.g., the Little Caesar’s Bowl), it is 17 of 34, or 50% of all bowl games. That is impressive. These two stand out because I had to Google both sponsors to find out what they were, the early dates of the games (i.e., even fewer people are watching), and the horrible matchups.

3. Insight Bowl (Dec. 31st, Tempe, AZ) – Minnesota v. Iowa St. – all around, just a strong resume. Sponsor I knew had a bowl game the last few years and still had to Google (Insight is a IT solutions company. Let me tell you, when I think college football fans, I’m thinking most of them are pondering their IT needs when watching games. It’s a natural fit); terrible time for viewership (this game kicks at 6pm on the East Coast on NYE. Bad football and champagne, baby!); and the added bonus of being the only bowl game not being shown on any of the major networks, ESPN, or ESPN2. NFL Network has it, meaning even fewer people are watching, even those who know the NFL Network exists. The only thing holding them back is that these teams come from major conferences. C’mon, Insight Bowl, get yourself a couple of WAC and Independent tie-ins, and you could go all the way!

2. Eagle Bank Bowl (Dec. 29th, Washington, D.C.) – UCLA v. Temple – You had to know the “sponsor title” bowl games were going to bring home the top spots. And this one nearly took the prize. Eagle Bank is a small bank that I had never heard of until starting this post. Not only that, they needed bail out money to survive, meaning we are paying to sponsor this bowl… nice! (note: there are three banks who got bailed out sponsoring bowl games, if you’re counting). It’s got the coveted Tuesday at 4:30pm time slot, and a terrible matchup of two teams that a. won’t travel (UCLA? Please see “South Florida” above) and b. have no fan base (Temple). If Army had beaten Navy yesterday, this game probably would have come off the list, but the idea of UCLA/Temple supposedly being an intriguing football matchup is just utterly ridiculous. Basketball, hell yes. Football? Yikes…

1a. Tositos Fiesta Bowl – TCU v. Boise St. – I’m sorry, I gotta digress a second. How in the HELL did this happen? Are you telling me the NCAA thinks this is better than seeing Iowa v. Boise St. and TCU v. Georgia Tech??? Here is the story, as the NCAA would like you to believe: For those who don’t know, the BCS bowls have certain tie ins to conferences, based on their history (which is now ignored under the current system, for the record), then rotate the BCS title game and the order in which they get to choose which remaining teams they want for their game. The Fiesta picked first and took TCU, so the Orange took Iowa (Georgia Tech has Orange Bowl tie in with the ACC) because “Iowa travels well,” meaning the Fiesta was then left with Boise. (Florida and Cincy have tie ins to the Sugar). Okay, so if the Orange knows Iowa travels so well, doesn’t the Fiesta know that to? OR, does the NCAA want to avoid this doomsday scenario: Cincy beats Florida (definitely possible, those guys were PISSED about Kelly ditching them and look like they could tackle a brick wall), Boise beats Iowa (I would give Boise and 7 in that game), and TCU beats Ga. Tech (tough, but possible. Prediction: Ga. Tech plays in the BCS title game in either of the next two years). That leaves us with 4 undefeated teams, two from major conferences, and two from small conferences, at the end of the year. Think I can’t make a case for Cincy being a champion, since they would have beat the same Florida team as Alabama? Exactly. I hate the BCS more than I hate Notre Dame. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. Moving on…

1. GMAC Bowl (Jan. 6th, Mobile, Alabama) – Central Michigan v. Troy – the clear cut winner. I mean, where do you start? The wife, who knows her sports, literally asked, “is it really just called the GMAC Bowl?” National sponsor bailed out by the government; completely random spot for the game, which only must have been created in the hopes a team like Troy, located in Montgomery, AL, would become bowl eligible so a few hundred people would show; two programs with zero history or connection to each other, other than the fact they would never have played in a bowl 10 years ago; being played on that oh holiest of football days, Wednesday, January 6th, which of course keeps with the current New Years bowl traditions (wife, in calm voice: January 6th? What the f&*$?); and just two, really, really bad teams no one cares about. The only mildly interesting thing about this game is that it’s Dan LeFevour of CMU’s last game, who, as most people don’t know, holds the NCAA record for career touchdowns. And pretty much the only people who know that are national pundits (well, some of them. Since LeFevour didn’t go to Notre Dame or USC, that eliminates Lou Holtz and Mark May, respectively), CMU grads, and some Michiganders. Otherwise, you could not make this game more pointless.

So there you have it. The sad thing is, I think I could create a whole other Top 5 and not use any of these games. Some interesting thoughts from others as I was kicking around this post idea: the wife said, “we will be the last generation that remembers when nothing had a sponsor attached to it.” Never occurred to me til then. I don’t know about you all, but I drown out those sponsors like I drown out the country music the wife puts on in the car. And a good buddy of mine, “they basically killed the whole New Year’s Day bowl watching. No one cares anymore.” He’s right. We used to sit around all day, eat snacks, and watch a bunch of interesting games. Now, I’m grudgingly watching the BCS title game at 10pm on Thursday, January 7th (bowl traditions!!!) , and maybe some scattered others. Maybe one day I’ll sit my kids down, make them eat junk food all day, watch some lame football, and tell them stories of when the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl used to be cool.