Bowled over
BY RAY VAN COR
The Greenville Standard
Well folks it’s that time again, college football bowl season is once again, kicking off on the Dec. 17 with the Bahamas Bowl with the Middle Tennessee Raiders (6–6) against the Toledo Rockets (7–5) at Noon on ESPN .
I love college football, but we have a grand total of 44 four bowl games this season, forty-four.
There is one company sponsoring two of these bowl games, two!
I think forty-four is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. The bowl games were supposed to be for a good season’s effort, six and six is not what I’d call a good season’s effort.
Let’s do the math, there is a 12 game regular season and you had to win at least eighty percent (80%) of your games.
That means you would have to win 9.6 of your games right? All things equal if you won nine games you should be bowl eligible which means only 28 teams could go bowling with 14 bowl games.
Now if you’re a C kind of person then 70% win season makes you eligible. Then 42 teams would have made it to a bowl, which means 21 bowl games.
However, this would also mean teams like (6–6) Missouri, Florida, Auburn, South Carolina, LSU, (7–5) Mississippi State and Tennessee would be sitting at home.
This would further mean, Alabama cities would miss out on some money because Mobile is hosting the Lending Tree Bowl on the Dec. 18 featuring Eastern Michigan (7–5) vs Liberty (7–5).
Montgomery is hosting the Camellia Bowl on the Dec. 25 featuring Georgia State (7–5) vs Ball State (6–6) and the Birmingham Bowl has No. 20 Houston (11–2) vs Auburn (6–6).
It is about the almighty dollar for both the schools with regards to advertising and the cities profit from hosting.
In the sport of the season, I’ve created a little bowl pool of my own consisting of the SEC teams, the three in state bowl games and college semifinal playoff games.
If you want to participate and try your luck, circle your winner of choice, and provide scores of both semi-final games starting with the Orange bowl then the Cotton bowl without going over.
If all else fails then the winner of the National Championship will decide the winner.
All you have to do is cut this out, highlight or circle your pick and send it to the paper or drop it off in our box at 113 West Commerce Street in Greenville.
Though it is for fun there could be a surprise in it for the winner.
Entries must either be received or postmarked by Dec. 22.
Dec. 18 LendingTree Bowl
Eastern Michigan (7–5) vs Liberty (7–5) 5:45pm/ESPN
Dec. 18 Independence Bowl
UAB (8–4) vs No. 13 BYU (10–2) 3:30pm/ESPN
Dec. 22 Armed Forces Bowl
Missouri (6–6) vs Army (8–3) 8pm/ESPN
Dec. 23 Gasparilla Bowl
UCF (8–4) vs Florida (6–6) 7pm/ESPN
Dec. 25 Camellia Bowl
Georgia State (7–5) vs Ball State (6–6) 2:30pm/ESPN
Dec. 28 Birmingham Bowl
No. 20 Houston (11–2) vs Auburn (6–6) Noon/ESPN
Dec. 28 Liberty Bowl
Mississippi State (7–5) vs Texas Tech (6–6) 6:45pm/ESPN
Dec. 30 Duke’s Mayo Bowl
North Carolina (6–6) vs South Carolina (6–6) 11:30 am/ESPN
Dec. 30 Music City Bowl
Tennessee (7–5) vs Purdue (8–4) 3pm/ESPN
Dec. 31 Gator Bowl
No. 17 Wake Forest (10–3) vs No. 25 Texas A&M (8–4) 11am/ESPN
Dec. 31 CFP Cotton Bowl
No. 1 Alabama (12–1) vs No. 4 Cincinnati (13–0) 3:30 pm/ESPN _______
Dec. 31 CFP Orange Bowl
No. 2 Michigan (12–1) vs No. 3 Georgia (12–1) 7:30pm/ESPN _______
Dec. 31 Outback Bowl
Penn State (7–5) vs No. 21 Arkansas (8–4) Noon/ESPN2
Dec. 31 Citrus Bowl
No. 15 Iowa (10–3) vs No. 22 Kentucky (9–3) 1pm/ABC
Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl
No. 7 Baylor (11–2) vs No. 8 Ole Miss (10–2) 8:45pm/ESPN
Jan. 1 Texas Bowl
LSU (6–6) vs Kansas State (7–5) 9pm/ESPN
Jan. 10 National championship
