Washing Out the Bowls

I wanted to use a clever play-on-words to title my look back on the college football bowl season, but the above title was the best I could come up with.

Now that all but two of the bowls have been played (the International Bowl is Saturday, the GMAC Bowl is Sunday, and the Tostitos National Championship Game does not have "bowl" in its name), I'd like to share my thoughts on the 2006-2007 bowl season:

• Each year there are more bowls played after New Year's Day. Until recently, games were sometimes played on January 2, but never later. A few years back, a couple of the major bowls were moved to January 3, 4, or 5. This year, two otherwise overlooked bowls with MAC tie-ins will kick-off nearly a full week into January. As usual, two of the BCS bowls (this year, the Orange and the Sugar) were played after January 1, and we won't have a national champion until January 8. I say, if teams end up playing bowl games on MLK Day, the NCAA is no longer allowed to use the "we can't make the season that long" excuse when explaining why there isn't a playoff.


• Notre Dame cleary demonstrated by its play on Wednesday that it had no business playing in the Sugar Bowl. But, unlike last season, this year #11 Notre Dame was the highest ranked team eligible for that final spot in a BCS bowl. Even without the large fan base and the special "Notre Dame rules," the Irish would have gotten that spot. #7 Wisconsin and #9 Auburn were ineligible because no conference can send more than two teams to BCS bowls.


• Boise State head coach Chris Petersen's balls are so big that he should be checked for testicular cancer.


• I like the idea of playing a bowl game in Canada, but Saturday's International Bowl needs to feature a better matchup than 8-4 Western Michigan vs. 7-5 Cincinnati. We could at least send our neighbors to the north the MAC champion and a #3 or #4 team from a BCS conference.