College Bowl “Mania”
In the midst of college bowl season, after a handful of games had been played and the best were yet to come, I asked my brother what games he was interested in seeing. My brother is not a college football fanatic. He is some level even below a casual observer. He likes to know what happens in college football without really having to watch full contests. It’s the equivalent of someone saying they enjoy a certain television show but they only watch it if they happen to accidentally flip to it while channel surfing.
So I asked him what he, the non-fanatic, was interested in watching in regards to the culmination of the bowl schedule. His response was, “Nothing…none of them really.”
Well then.
But after some time, this response didn’t really surprise me. Other than finding out who became national champion, why would a casual observer care about the outcome of ANY bowl game? Does my real life brother or your hypothetical cousin care at all if Oregon beats Wisconsin or not? Think about it. And that’s a BCS bowl: one of the “important” ones.
To be honest, why would die hard college football crazies care about the result of any bowl game that isn’t being played by an alma mater? Sure the Rose Bowl is important and the game should be exciting so we will all watch, but does the winner actually matter? Here’s the dirty, little secret that television ratings seem to butt up against each and every year: bowl game wins and losses mean squat.
Making the bowl game is the reward for a “successful” season. (Successful was put in quotes for the sake of the Vanderbilt Commodores and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.) Winning a bowl game is nice but not really relevant. Do teams use a big bowl victory as a launching pad to success the following season? Sometimes, but not always. Mississippi State used a huge bowl victory over Michigan to finish off last season to buoy a horribly disappointing season in 2011.
There are certainly some interesting matchups this bowl season to keep an eye on, even outside of the BCS. The Gator Bowl and Sun Bowl are fun matchups; the Liberty Bowl should be an interesting juxtaposition between one conference’s elite versus another’s mediocre. Just remember that, unless you have rooting interest, the winner in any of these not-for-the-National-Championship games doesn’t really matter. And for that reason, who can really blame someone for not tuning in?
