The headline – Internet Provocateur (aka Me) Named Bowl Czar – is fictitious. It could never happen any more than – Joe Biden Sworn In As VP. Oops, bad example. But it’s a New Year and an Internet provocateur’s fancy turns to “just suppose”. It’s easy and popular to complain about “what is stoopid” without offering a “what could be less stoopid”. Here are a few Suppose They’s for your consideration.
“Bowl games” came into being over 100 years ago. “The Granddaddy of’em all” aka The Rose Bowl was first played in 1902. The 2nd one was in 1916 and annually ever after. Tournament of Roses officials thought adding a football game would spice up Pasadena’s annual flower festival. Chariot races were the second choice. That is A FACT!
Why are they called “bowl games”? The architect who designed The Rose Bowl in Pasadena had also designed The Yale Bowl in New Haven. He called all his round stadiums “bowls”.
Subsequently Miami, New Orleans and Dallas came up with their Orange, Sugar and Cotton respectively. Tub-thumping civic poobahs lured trainloads of snowbirds to their locales with these post-season exhibitions. Snowbirds then leave mucho $$$ behind in hotels, restaurants and assorted retail recreation.
Bowl games have always been all about $$$$ whether manipulated by local poobahs in tacky blazers or ESPN accountants.
Attracting snowbirds has snowballed over the years, as we all know. Of the 120 or so Division One (yes, its called something else – FSB, PCB, FDR, who cares?) football programs, fully half – 60 – are “rewarded” with post-season games. That’s the equivalent of declaring everyone with a C average as co-salutatorians. Some schools are probably already doing THAT too.
High academia being a co-conspirator in this opus ridiculum should come as no surprise. Now Congress wants to get involved. Why should THAT be a surprise?
Mediocre coaches squirm off “the hot seat” by touting that they stumbled their way to some Whozit Bowl in Whoville sponsored by AdvoWhozit in front of fewer people than a decent Cracker Barrel feeds on a slow day.
If that wasn’t silly enough….. nitwit board monkeys trumpet their faux vicarious superiority over rival nitwit board monkeys by bragging about how many of these pigskin Slim Whitman concerts their team of choice has gone to over the years.
Semi-literate thug-aletes make major life choices in anticipation of participating in pre-game pie-eating contests with other semi-literate thug-aletes with the winner getting a $30 wristwatch and two Rhianna CDs. The losers still get the $30 watches.
OK, enough zingers about the current bowl game absurdity. As your duly self-appointed Bowl Czar I hereby declare:
• We are reducing the total number of bowl games to fifteen – 15. The 30 teams to be selected by secret balloting by Lou Holtz, Herbie, Colin Cowherd, two currently out-of-work coaches (not-named-Butch) and three big black former players with shaved heads wearing gangsta zoot suits. There is apparently an endless supply of the latter. In case of a tie, an ESPN blond floozie will go eenie meenie minee mo.
• All games will be played at locales that 3 out of 4 random shoppers in a mall in Scranton PA have (1) heard of and (2) been mildly curious about visiting. Shreveport must do with its Gumbo Festival.
• All games must be titled after a fruit, a flower, or an animal indigenous to the hosting location. ESPN can flim flam all the dopey goofball sponsors it can swindle and let their SrVP of Wasted Marketing Dollars get 30 seconds of TV exposure between the first/second quarters. Sponsor banners are OK; but the official game name has to be a fruit/flower or indigenous animal.
• All games will be played as double-headers in either climate-controlled domed stadia and/or warm-weather climes where the average December temperature is “don’t need to wear micro-fleece”. Game One kick-offs at noon with Game Two one hour after Game One is over. All tickets are good for both games that day. Divide the venue into four equal quadrants and allocate seats accordingly.
• Bowl game eligibility will be based entirely on whether a team is any good or not. No weight given to conference affiliation or how many crimes against nature the players or coaches have been accused of lately. Teams who pad their W-L record with cupcakes will be assessed an 8-point scoreboard handicap for each geographical cupcake they bullied up on in September.
• Team match-ups will be determined by how well the team uniforms coordinate. Two teams with red/white, for instance, will never play each other. Likewise no teams wearing green as their primary jersey color. Teams sign a binding agreement that Nike will NOT design them a special bowl “combat” uniform and their helmets can NOT be painted a dull flat color. Teams can have those silly little helmet stickers however.
• There will be “special bowl playing rules” in effect. Take the best quirky rules from the CFL, Australian Rules, Harlem Globetrotters, Rugby and Arena ball and use those. Everybody in motion…. drop-kicks…. forward laterals…. sneaky substitutions…. hidden ball tricks…. confetti–in-a-bucket…. whatever. It’s a meaningless bowl game, not pediatric neuro-surgery.
• Alumni players: Each team can add one alumni player to their active roster BUT he must have actually graduated from that school with a semi-meaningful degree in something that does not have a “hypen” in it. That, alas, eliminates 93% of current NFL players. But if they can find one, he can play in the bowl game.
• Oh; for sure…. any winning team giving their coach “a Gatorade bath” will forfeit their $30 wristwatches AND the school banned from any bowl for three years. Dumping the Gatorade on the ESPN sideline floozie might have some appeal.
As for all the assorted Thrills Of/Agonies Of this current bowl season…. just replay the Baylor v Washington pinball game on an endless loop on all 26 ESPN channels until it’s time for the Super Bowl.
Being Bowl Czar is hungry work. I’m gonna see whats bubbling in the crockpot.
Buddies & Babes
I Appreciate You!
If 50,000 pointy-heads all explode at the same time and you don’t hear it; does it make a sound? Well, you will hear it if it does happen.
Effective next Monday – Jan 9 – I will have a column appearing weekly in chapelboro.com – THE community website for Orange County. This is in addition to what appears here. It will be a sports column. Definitely not “that P word”. Good thing, huh! Exposing the average Orange Countian to an unfettered BobLee is Art Chansky’s whizbang idea. I will keep you updated and provide links. Rush lasted three weeks with ESPN so the bar is set pretty low.
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