Remember when bowl games were a combination chamber of commerce coup and reward for teams with successful seasons? There were only a handful of bowls and you could know them all. Now there are 32, including Poinsettia, Popajohns.com, Insight, Meineke Car Care, Music City, Champs Sports, MPC Computers and GMAC Bowls.
That means 64 teams. How do you choose 64 deserving teams? You don’t.
In fact, there are no fewer than seven teams, including (6-6) Miami and (6-6) Florida State, who have to win their bowl game just to avoid a losing season. There’s even a bowl game, the Independence in Shreveport, La., where neither team (Oklahoma State and Alabama) enters with a winning record.
While going “Bowling” has certainly lost much of its luster, imagine how it looks to go uninvited to one.