Get ready, it's juice box, 'er, college bowl season once again

Greetings sports fans. Those of you who know me and remember when I used to write regularly in this column probably know that if it’s December and John’s writing, then it must be that time of year again.

Yep — it’s bowl season!

This bowl season is particularly interesting because it’s like year three or four of a phenomenon that gets more disappointing every year. By that I mean the selection of teams who have mediocre to losing seasons as participants worthy of playing in the postseason — such as it is for the NCAA’s Football Bowl Series classification.

Yep, where it used to be making it to a bowl game was a reward to players, coaches and fans for a good season, it has now become the NCAA’s version of “everybody gets a participation trophy.” And a juice box, albeit rather high-priced juice box.

Part of the problem rests in the fact that there are simply too many bowls. This year, there are 42, and I’m including the Jan. 9 national championship game in this too, even though those two teams will have advanced out of the field of four in two previous bowls.

So, there are 82 teams that need to fill those 41 other bowl games, which start this Saturday with venerable Celebration Bowl, New Mexico Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, Camellia Bowl, Cure Bowl and New Orleans Bowl. Eighty-two teams, count ‘em, 82.

So are there 82 teams deserving of playing an extra game? I guess that depends upon what you mean by “deserving.” For the sake of argument, let’s say a deserving team is at least one who has a winning record, meaning they won more than they lost.

Viewed through this lens, the answer to my question is no. Of the 82 teams, 20 have .500 or sub-.500 records. That’s 24.69 percent of teams deemed worthy of the post season.

Of those 20 teams, 17 have 6-6 records, one, Hawaii, is 6-7, but they’re at least staying home to play in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve. Two teams, Mississippi State and North Texas, are 5-7, but have dates to play in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Bowl and the Heart of Dallas Bowl, respectively.

North Texas gets 6-5 Army at Dallas, while the Rebels play 6-6 Miami (Ohio) the day after Christmas, making the St. Petersburg Bowl a battle of mediocrity or worse. In fact, there are four bowls that can claim this distinction: the New Orleans Bowl which pits Southern Miss vs. Louisiana-Lafayette, the Quick Lane Bowl’s match up of Boston College and Maryland and the Independence Bowl’s tilt between NC State and Vanderbilt.

All six of these teams are 6-6.

I get why there are so many bowl games: money. According to a 2015 ESPN piece, the 39 bowls in 2014 — the first year of the current College Football Playoffs — shelled out over $505.9 million to the respective teams and their conferences.

Do you think that number has decreased in two years? That’s rhetorical, but no, not likely, even if you discarded the addition of two more games.

That number also doesn’t take into account the millions and millions of dollars the cities hosting bowls will receive in economic development from players and staff from the respective universities and their fans. And after all, everything we do should be done in light of creating economic development.

The NCAA needs to begin rethinking the number of bowls it has, which is probably unlikely considering the money. Teams that don’t achieve winning records in my mind aren’t worthy of further reward that season.

They’re mediocre, at best, and need to be thinking of next year. Including them in the postseason dilutes the accomplishments of teams who are winners, those who go 8-4, 9-3 and above.

Even 7-5, of which there are six teams this year, would be better. It’s time to reward actual success, and leave the participation trophies to others.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].