Article:Have You Watched The Bowl Games?

Starting December 20th the NCAA FBS (Football Bowl Subdivison) kicked off the bowl season with the first of their 34 bowl games. Now on January 3rd as I write this the 32nd bowl game is being played with 2 more to go. Of those bowl games I can say I watched major portions of a grand total of 4 of those games and plan on watching the final two… maybe. So my question to you is: how many games have you watched?

The games I’ve watched are as follows:

Rutgers-NC State I watched nearly all of because I’m from NJ and would like to see Rutgers do well even if I never went there.

Oregon v OK State I watched a good portion of because I thought there might be some good offense.

Pitt v Oregon State I watched a good portion of because one of my best friends went to Pitt so I figured It’d be a good game to be able to talk about.

Penn State v USC I watched the first half of because I wanted to see USC and turned off at the half because it wasn’t particularly close.

Out of 34 bowl games I will have NOT watched 28 of them. My guess is most people would say similar things to what I have above. They watched their alma mater they watched their friends alma mater, maybe a random game here or there and then the big games. The hardcore college football fans maybe watched a few more or even caught them all, but I would guess most fans did not.

So what’s the point? The college presidents, the networks etc. are worried they will make less money if they move to a playoff system (don’t buy any other b.s that’s the real reason we don’t have a playoff).

Yet if they had more tv viewership they could sell the games for more money correct?

Imagine (and I know this is tough but just go with me on this) if they moved to an 8 or 12 team playoff and still had bowl games for the rest of the teams that didn’t qualify. Would you not watch your Alma Mater or your friend’s Alma Mater just like you do now? I’m betting you would watch just as many non playoff bowl games. Then you put in a playoff, wouldn’t you watch almost all if not all of those games? I would.

Let’s say you have a 12 team playoff that would be 11 games between top teams. Add the lets say 3-4 more non playoff bowl games I would still watch and I’ve gone from watching 6 bowl games to 13-15 games. My viewership has more then doubled.

My suggestions then are this:

If you’re a college president: move to a playoff and make more money. If you’re a college fan: Don’t go to or watch bowl games you don’t care about. Maybe if no one watches eventually they won’t keep making all this money and realize they need a change.