Posts tagged ‘college bowl games’
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY: BOWL GAMES
In a previous piece I wrote about how everything in a writer’s world affects his or her writing to some extent. I feel what we produce is a product of our environment.
This piece results primarily from my past experience, but more importantly from my values.
As you can see from the title I will focus on college bowl games but not from the sports aspect. I prefer to look a little deeper, focusing on the direction so many aspects of our lives take nowadays. Traditions diluted for the sake of how much money can be made. At first this trend was more insidious. Now it is becoming more and more blatant.
I can remember when there were only four bowl games. I could be wrong about the number. If I am, someone let me know. I’m talking about maybe fifty or more years ago. They were the Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar Bowls and they were all played on January 1st, a full day of football.
In a recent edition of our local paper I counted 35 bowl games now being played over the course of weeks providing a minimum of overlap for the greatest viewing audience. There are probably more.
Now we have such titles as the Little Caesar Pizza Bowl, Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, Chick-fil-A Bowl just to name a few. With at least 35 bowls that means at least 70 teams played in a bowl game. To me, the honor of participating in a bowl game is greatly diluted these days. I think the four above mentioned games still garnish the most honor. But really, do we need all these games? The avid sports fan I’m sure will say yes, but it seems to me that pride of saying your team participated in a bowl game has greatly diminished.
My cynical self tends to look at this trend as just a blatant way to make more money. Another example of one of our institutions diluted in the quest for the almighty dollar.
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