Bowl Mania: College Football’s Participation Trophy

by Bob Russell, ©2022

(Dec. 29, 2022) — As I was watching a bowl game between two 6-6 teams a few days ago I heard one of the idiot talking heads say bowls are “rewards” for successful seasons.  A .500 record is a success?  When I was in school a 50 on a paper or test was FAILURE, not success, but “everyone gets a participation trophy” is the direction our nation has taken in the last 30 years. 

College sports, especially football, has become nothing more than another money-making scam.  Cities that host games make money, colleges make money, local businesses make lots of money, and sponsors make money because team fans travel, get hotel rooms, eat, and buy souvenirs of their trip.  The fact that most of the games are mediocre at best doesn’t seem to matter.  Back when I got interested in college football (early 1960s) there were four bowl games: Rose, Orange, Cotton, and Sugar, played on New Year’s Day.  The NCAA set the requirement that teams had to win 6 games to be eligible, but they only played 10 game seasons and a 6-4 team wouldn’t even get a sniff of a bowl because there were teams that won 8, 9 or 10 games, getting the nod for the few bowl games available.  Today teams play at least 12 and most play 13 games per season so a 6-7 team winds up in a participation bowl to keep them from having hurt feelings over having such a poor team.

From the original four bowl games, now there are dozens that start in early December and run all month, with several games per day on many of those days. The number of 6-6 and 6-7 teams is staggering. How many teams won at least 8 games in 2022? I don’t know the answer to that question but it is a very low one. Four of them, (1) Georgia, (4) Ohio State, (2) Michigan, and (3) TCU will compete for the national championship, with the semi-final games being played on December 31 and the championship game played on January 9, 2023.

The win level should be set at 8 now, but that would eliminate mediocre teams and cut down on the profits of people who care more about putting money in their pockets than the integrity of the sport.  Some are proposing that college football players, who get an “education,” if one can call it that, for free also be paid to play.  Will that apply to everyone or just the stars?  America, once a shining city on a hill admired by the entire world for its liberty and moral values, has become a dictatorial oligarchy ruled by decadence and greed, despised by both allies and enemies.  America can no longer be depended on to help others overcome tyranny because tyranny is on the rise here.  College sports, especially football, used to be something to aspire to so one could achieve success through hard work and dedication, but all that has been diluted in order to “not offend” anyone or “hurt the feelings” of those not quite so talented or willing to work as hard to achieve success. 

Colleges are no longer “institutions of higher learning” as they have been for more than 200 years.  They have become indoctrination centers designed to infuse young adults with the idea that honesty, integrity, quality, and morals no longer matter.  “Equity,” the idea that equal outcome is morally superior to equal opportunity, has taken over among the “woke,” the contingent that hates America more than anything else in the world.  Sadly, those idiots who call themselves “woke” have control of the government, hollywierd, the Pravda/Goebbels fake news propaganda machine, many corporate boards, and too many Americans either too stupid, too cowardly, or too evil to stand against the demonic evil that is destroying the greatest nation to ever exist on this planet.

The best way to achieve their sadistic plan of world domination is to ensure that people are uneducated, poorly educated, or indoctrinated into the globalist mindset.  One of the tactics being used is destroying the incentive of people to excel in any field of endeavor, and it started in colleges several decades ago. Since athletics are so important to Americans the globalists set to work taking out one of the premier athletic events in America, college football.

I would like to see a set of standards that make sense in college football.  I believe a standard of 8 victories in a 12- or 13-game season is reasonable. A team would have to win two-thirds of their games to qualify, similar to the 60% originally required to qualify.  Let’s un-dilute the process and return real quality to college football.  The Gator and Bluebonnet bowls were the next bowls to be established, coming into being in the late 1960s or early 1970s if my memory is correct.  Cut bowls back to those six, unless enough teams qualify to have more, and hold only those needed in the order in which they were established.  Will quality and integrity prevail or will the downward spiral of college football continue?  I don’t know but hope and pray that quality and integrity win out before the institution of college football becomes another casualty of “wokeness,” a sickness I attribute to the father of evil that holds so much sway in the world, and more disturbing, in America.

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.