BOWLS, BOWLS, BOWLS
BY RAY VAN COR
The Greenville Standard
There were 39 bowl games in Division I football hosted this season, not including the National Championship Game.
Our state played host to three of the bowl games, the Birmingham bowl, Camelia bowl held in Montgomery, and the Dollar General Bowl held in Mobile.
That’s a grand total of 78 teams. I thought Bowl games were to reward teams for a great season. When did we start rewarding a losing schedule of six and six?
If you watched some of these games there was almost nobody in the stands and the parking lots reminded me of some remote desert.
When I went to school 70 percent was barely a passing grade, and 80 percent was respectable or at least for me. If you do the math on a 12 game regular season, you would have to win 9.6 games to equal 80 percent.
Only 19 collegiate teams had a nine win regular season, and eight of those teams with 11 wins or more.
Doing the math again, that should equal 10 bowl games right?
Now here’s the rub, according to some reports and Wikipedia, they’re trying to add 10 more to the list, including three to be held outside the United States. The suggested sites are Ireland; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Melbourne, Australia and Toronto or Ontario, Canada.
I think they’re over-reaching here, don’t you? The Bahamas and Hawaii bowl games should be reserved for the four top ranked teams. Now that’s would be what I would call a reward.
Let me wrap up this bowl season for you. The South East Conference played in 10 bowl games and managed to win six. Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Georgia dropped the proverbial SEC ball losing their bowls.
However, Troy made the Dollar General Bowl and handed a Mid-American conference (10-3) Buffalo team a 42-32 loss. The University of Alabama Birmingham Blazers beat the Northern Illinois Huskies 37-13 in the Boca Raton Bowl.
In essence all the Alabama schools that went to bowls won. Five wins and zero losses and The National Championship of course. That my friend is a 100 percent Bama.
