Five Ways I Would Change Bowl Season

Because this should never happen.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I LOVE BOWL GAMES. I love [almost] everything about them. The strange match-ups, the constant flow of football on my television, pretending like I know every tendency of every star player even though I have never seen half of them take a snap.

But much like the 2007 Patriots, the bowl season isn’t quite perfect. Here are five adjustments that will never be made, but should be made anyways.

Please get Pam Ward away from my precious bowl games.

I’m no sexist, but Pam Ward is a terribly annoying woman with a very small brain. One of the most important parts of bowl season is the illusion produced by ESPN that every one of these bowl games is very, very important. NO! MIAMI (OHIO) HAS TO WIN IF THE MAC WANTS TO STAKE ITS CLAIM AS THE GREATEST CONFERENCE IN GODADDY.COM BOWL HISTORY!

It’s this illusion that kind of makes you care even though you know its not true.THOSE POOR KIDS FROM TROY! THIS IS ALL THEY HAVE TO PLAY FOR! It’s kind of like watching pro wrestling as a little kid (or a 21-year-old).

Well nothing, and I mean nothing, makes a game seem less important than hearing Pam Ward sign on as the play-by-play commentator. Everything about Ward’s voice just screams “Eh, I don’t really need to watch this.” She could announce the Rose Bowl and make it feel like a mid-season slugfest between Florida Atlantic and Arkansas State.

I don’t know which bowl games she’ll announce, but I just know she’ll be at one or maybe two or maybe even three of them. I can’t imagine the terror. Chris Spielman’s IQ drops when he hears Pam Ward talk.

AND SHE’S A COLD-HEARTED MONSTER!

Enough of the SEC vs. Big 10 bowl games.

We get it. It’s the college football recreation of the Civil War. North vs. South. Speed vs. Brawn.

It makes a fun storyline for one bowl game per year. But right now, three of the SEC and Big 10′s better second-tier bowl games are all against one another. I can only tolerate these games for so long. Swap one of them out for the Pac-10, who has awful bowl tie-ins. Give a conference champion from a smaller conference a chance to play against a mediocre SEC or Big-10 team. Anything would work.

An Outback Bowl between say Boise State and either Florida or Penn State would be excellent. It would beat the hell out of bringing in two fan bases who have absolutely zero enthusiasm for playing in a bowl game that they view as purgatory. The Outback Bowl, Capital One Bowl and Gator Bowl are bland every single year. But more on that later.

Play games on Christmas Day.

You know why New Year’s Day has always been traditionally loaded with bowl games? Because it’s a holiday in which everyone is too hungover to do anything but sit on a couch and watch football. With that I present to you, Christmas Day.

Not so much for the hangover reason but more for the fact that there is absolutely nothing to do on Christmas Day after somewhere around 11 A.M. Christmas Day is Christmas Morning followed by 12 hours of sitting around and staring at the presents you got.

In other words, it is the perfect time for a day chocked full of meaningless college football games. The void was once filled with the Blue-Gray Football Classic which allowed us to watch the best players from the worst teams trot around and trade helmet stickers. But now that space is empty and cold.

Any team that is playing a game around Christmas time is already going to be on the road instead of home anyways. Why not make them play on Christmas Day? The sanity of my afternoon depends on it.

Put bowl games in places people actually want to go.

Shreveport, Louisiana; Detroit, Michigan; Boise, Idaho; Mobile, Alabama; Albuquerque, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas.

These are all cities that will host a bowl game this season.

WHY!?!?!?!?!?!

Yes, I know that for some of these places, a bowl game is the largest economy boom they see all year. And I know that it should be in the good old American spirit to help uplift these perennially crappy locales. But I will never, ever, ever willingly travel to any of these bowl games. And I don’t think that I’m alone.

Make no doubt about it, every bowl game not named the BCS National Championship Game is technically meaningless. The national exposure is nice, the paycheck for showing up is significant and there is some mystique in the older, more established bowl games. But that doesn’t change the fact that these are mostly frivolous exhibition games and they should be treated as such.

A bowl game should feel like a fun reward and that is not accomplished in Boise or Detroit. Yes, these games are there to make money for themselves and the participating schools. But people are going to watch on television no matter what and that will make sponsors happy enough. Every school has a few old guys that will easily donate as much money as you’re going to make for dragging sad 18-year-olds to the land of Terry Bradshaw.

Send another game or two out to Hawaii. Trade Albuquerque for another game in Vegas. The Elian Gonzalez Bowl at the future Marlins’ Ballpark has a nice ring to it. Another game in San Antonio would be cool. I’m sure theres a 120 x 53.3 yard patch of grass somewhere in the Keys where you could throw something together.

This could work.

A bowl game is supposed to be a vacation unless you’re playing for a crystal football. Treat it like one.

Dear bowl games, stop regurgitating the same product over and over again.

I can only speak from personal experience on this one. I am a fan of an occasionally elite SEC team that from time-to-time has very mediocre seasons. When they have one of said mediocre seasons, they typically play in a bowl game that is very close to me. In other words, I have sat through more Outback Bowls and Citrus/Capital One Bowls in person than I care to admit.

And they are the same exact thing every damn time.

For the Outback Bowl you get a few pre-game sky-divers which is kind of cool followed by the most horrendous flyover that you have ever witnessed. A group of “Red Baron” planes. Every single time. It’s like a giant slap in the face to the U.S. military and the typical awesomeness that a traditional flyover represents.

But then they also provide you with a wonderful halftime show where they take what seems like 500 sucky high school bands from all over the country, throw them all on the field together and watch them try to put together something, anything that sounds like music. The result makes you wish that you were deaf and living in a time before the invention of hearing aids. Rinse and repeat. Every damn year.

But at least the Outback Bowl halftime show has something of a disclaimer that it’s going to be terrible and chaotic.

Each year, the Capital One Bowl puts on something that it bills as the “All-American Halftime Show.” Oh yes, it’s just as horrible as it sounds. There’s bad Blues Brothers impersonators, a bad Elvis impersonator and America’s greatest collection of awkward dancers. And it never changes. Ever.

It’s like a Super Bowl halftime show if every credible musician in the world went on strike at the same time, and Roger Goodell gambled away all of the production funds.

Oh, and the Citrus Bowl still holds the title of worst stadium on the Planet Earth. It looks like someone was given the task of building a low-budget high school stadium for a school of 75,000.

Just freshen things up. It’s all I ask. Some of us are dumb enough to come back more than once.

Happy Bowl Season!

-Bryan