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http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/sports/article.adp?id=20041202125109990001
There used to be a phrase in college football that had great meaning: New Year's Day bowl. In those days, there were four of them --The Cotton, The Orange, The Sugar and, "the grand-daddy of them all," The Rose.
For many years, the first three were played early in the afternoon with the Rose being played last. Then, in 1965, the Orange Bowl moved to NBC and became a night game meaning that if you really loved college football, you could sit in front of your TV from 1:30 in the afternoon until 11:30 at night; flipping between the Cotton and the Sugar early in the day before hunkering down to watch the Rose and the Orange later. Then, in 1982, the Sugar Bowl became a night game too, but that was OK because there was still 10 hours of football. In fact, in order to keep its tripleheader intact, NBC moved the then relatively new Fiesta Bowl into the old Sugar Bowl slot. So, there were five New Year's Day games.
Was the system perfect? No. Bowl committees routinely made backroom deals in early November, often committing to teams that would end up with three or four losses. Conference tie-ins made it almost impossible to match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in a national championship game and split national championships were as much the rule as the exception. But there was a sense of tradition; the notion that Jan. 1 was the end of the college football season and that the 10 teams playing on that day had done something special to play in a New Year's Day bowl.
Then, as with all things in sports, tradition went out the window. Bowl games sold themselves -- and their souls -- to corporate America and games began cropping up on New Year's Day like grapes in a winery.
One bowl named for a restaurant simply plunked itself down on New Year's Day and began calling itself a New Year's Day bowl. Everyone with an ugly jacket in his closet across America decided to start a bowl game and corporations lined up to slap their names onto the games.
Out of this morass came the Bowl Championship Series, undoubtedly the worst invention to come along since new Coke. There's only one difference between the BCS and new Coke: the people at Coke knew a bad idea when they saw it (and tasted it) and pulled the plug sooner rather than later.
(click the link for the rest of the article).
There used to be a phrase in college football that had great meaning: New Year's Day bowl. In those days, there were four of them --The Cotton, The Orange, The Sugar and, "the grand-daddy of them all," The Rose.
For many years, the first three were played early in the afternoon with the Rose being played last. Then, in 1965, the Orange Bowl moved to NBC and became a night game meaning that if you really loved college football, you could sit in front of your TV from 1:30 in the afternoon until 11:30 at night; flipping between the Cotton and the Sugar early in the day before hunkering down to watch the Rose and the Orange later. Then, in 1982, the Sugar Bowl became a night game too, but that was OK because there was still 10 hours of football. In fact, in order to keep its tripleheader intact, NBC moved the then relatively new Fiesta Bowl into the old Sugar Bowl slot. So, there were five New Year's Day games.
Was the system perfect? No. Bowl committees routinely made backroom deals in early November, often committing to teams that would end up with three or four losses. Conference tie-ins made it almost impossible to match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in a national championship game and split national championships were as much the rule as the exception. But there was a sense of tradition; the notion that Jan. 1 was the end of the college football season and that the 10 teams playing on that day had done something special to play in a New Year's Day bowl.
Then, as with all things in sports, tradition went out the window. Bowl games sold themselves -- and their souls -- to corporate America and games began cropping up on New Year's Day like grapes in a winery.
One bowl named for a restaurant simply plunked itself down on New Year's Day and began calling itself a New Year's Day bowl. Everyone with an ugly jacket in his closet across America decided to start a bowl game and corporations lined up to slap their names onto the games.
Out of this morass came the Bowl Championship Series, undoubtedly the worst invention to come along since new Coke. There's only one difference between the BCS and new Coke: the people at Coke knew a bad idea when they saw it (and tasted it) and pulled the plug sooner rather than later.
(click the link for the rest of the article).
