Ohio State "Black"eyes and too many bowl games

Every year we get into the debate that is the BCS championship. Where we all sit around and debate why a playoff should be implemented instead of the bowl format we currently have today.

Let's face it, as I pointed out before in another post, there is no way that the university presidents will risk the money that is pulled in by college football today. So, as a result, we will continue to have a bowl format to decide the national champions. But that brings up the a reverse argument. That is the issue of way too many meaningless and unwatched bowl games that result in horribly lopsided losses.

The most obvious one this season was the GMAC bowl, where Tulsa set an almost 50 year old record for the highest winning margin in bowl games ever. Then on the very next night we once again were subjected to an awful BCS championship game played between two teams that maybe or maybe not should have been playing for a championship. Even with that, one of those teams, Ohio State, has for 3 straight years played in the BCS champ game and for the past two has been completely dominated by the opposing team, even though the Buckeyes were the favorite going into that game.

Add in the fact that another 7 games in the post season bowl games were decided by MORE than a double-digit margin and you have the very obvious evidence that MANY of the teams playing in post-season bowl games should never have been there in the first place. But that is NOT the fault of the teams playing in those games. The problem is that there are just WAY too many bowl games to begin with.

If the country is going to be stuck with a bowl game process that is to decide the national championship, then the NCAA needs to DE-sanction all but about 10 post season bowl games. Those 10 should include the current 5 BCS games, (BCS champ, Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta), and about 5 others that have a long standing history, the Cotton, the Liberty, the Sun (which is the longest consecutive running bowl, the Gator, the Champ Sports, and maybe one or two others that have very long histories, like the Peach (which I REFUSE to call the Chick-Fil-A bowl).

So, how would selection go? Well, first, the conference champions of EVERY conference get to go. That means that 11 of the 20-22 or so teams would automatically go to those bowl games, and then selection would go to the ONLY those teams ranked in the top 20 that are not conference champions.

While it may not eliminate blow out bowl games, (like the Sugar this year where Georgia just DOMINATED Hawai'i), it would at least look to minimize that, and make the bowl game we do have that much more interesting to watch.

No, it still does not solve the national championship debate issue, but unless there ever is a playoff, that will never be solved. So, again, if we are stuck with a bowl system, we should at least make it the best bowl system we can.