Bowl Season: ESPN Wins, Fans Lose

I don’t have cable or satellite, and my internet provider doesn’t offer ESPN 3. If I could pay separately for ESPN 3, but they decided they want to screw people over who have internet companies that are already screwing them over. I will get to watch probably 4 bowl games this year, and 2 of them will only be because I’m with relatives who have ESPN. This sucks.

That smorgasbord of football on New Years Day was what made the bowl season. I remember how you could watch all the games on the Big 3 channels (laughing…how old am I huh?). I do agree that ESPN has way too much control over the bowls and spreading them out over a two week period,and where/how do they justify putting these new no history bowls on Jan 1…oh well, just another example of how much the almighty $ rules and corporations come before the fans. Thanks CN for letting me semi-rant.

Merry Christmas Husker Nation
and be safe

Between ESPN having a complete monopoly on the television side and the automatic tie-ins, the bowl system will more than likely be dead in 5-6 years.

There are enough schools who are financially strapped as-is, the added cost of travel for teams and with ticket revenue hitting rock bottom, I’d be surprised if we don’t see teams turning down bowl invites in the very near future.

It’s always surprised me when the NCAA has said “A playoff in college football would cause players to miss too much class time,” but apparently class time isn’t as important in Div 1-AA and lower or in EVERY OTHER COLLEGE SPORT.

I would not be utterly surprised if the NCAA eventually ends up in hot water for being a multi-billion dollar industry under the veil of being a non-profit.

Playoffs are coming, and it may be sooner than we all think.

They’ve done the same thing to the preseason basketball tournaments as they have to the bowls. They’ve ceased to be simple news providers and started altering events by throwing their weight around. Something like The Decision never could have happened five years ago. ESPN is not inherently or even intentionally evil, but its mere existence in its present form is bad for sports.

similar to this w/ my uncle last weekend during our family Xmas get together. The bowls are definitely too spread out and it was much better when you could just watch all day on New Year’s. Now the friggin Cotton Bowl is on the 7th fercrissakes!

Join me my brothers, and together we will take down the facist bourgeois and take back what is rightfully ours! A proud day of college football on New Years day! The revolution starts now!

Assimilation of all bowl games and every pro league play-offs soon to come.

Espn = WalMart.

I keep hearing how a playoff would kill the bowls…..that, I believe is bull crap. It would probably kill the BCS bowls and maybe hurt the Cotton and Gator bowls but the rest would be the same as they are now….meaningless.
You would still have a Championship game so it wouldnt suffer, in fact, you may just get more people traveling to it as it would be an actual championship game instead of the current MNC game we have now. The Orange, Rose, Fiesta, and Sugar wouldnt get the same big name high ranked teams they do now nor would the Cotton or Gator bowls as those teams would most likely be involved in the playoffs. The rest of the bowls would continue to get the mid to low qualifying teams they are getting now so I dont see that those games would mean anything less then they do today.

You can have BOTH the playoffs and the bowls and still survive and most likely bring in more money then you do right now.

This was a well-written and insightful read. I don’t like the BCS, but I don’t like a playoff system either. I think Bowl Games are worth saving. You make a great point about network competition playing a big role in the matchups. I hope that, as fans, we can vote with television ratings and game attendance rather than asking someone to regulate CFB, by which we risk it being messed up even more.