Since their start in 1902, college bowl games have been a major source of entertainment for fans during the college football postseason. But now, college bowl games are incredibly overdone and have become nothing more than a way for college football programs to make a quick buck. Bowl games should be a chance for some of the best teams to display their skill one last time at the end of a season, not a way for universities to make even more money off of college football.
In the early days of college bowl games, there were only a handful of bowl games played exclusively on New Year’s Day, but now, there are over 40 different bowl games dominating sports television from mid-December to early January. Bowl games were originally created to display match ups between the top teams in the league. But now, teams with losing records can easily qualify to compete in a bowl game; a team only needs to have a total of six wins in order to be invited to play.
Although these not-so-elite games were originally created to break up the monotonous period of time between the end of the regular season and the championship game, they are now nothing more than an over-commercialized mess. Long gone are the days of prestigious sporting events and bowl games like the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. Now just about any team can play in one of the corporate named and sponsored bowl games such as the TaxSlayer Bowl or the GoDaddy Bowl. There are so many bowl games going on that they’ve honestly become uninteresting. Who cares who won the Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl or the AutoZone Liberty Bowl? These wins or losses don’t necessarily count for anything, and many of these matchups don’t add anything exciting to college football.
Bowl games have lost their tradition and have become nothing more than universities exploiting their athletes to earn a massive payout. According to statisticbrain.com, in 2014, each team that competed in the Fiesta Bowl earned an $18,000,000 payout. Even teams that play in one of the more obscure bowl games can earn a minimum of $325,000. Bowl games really aren’t about the football anymore; it’s all about getting the biggest sponsorship and walking away with the biggest paycheck. I used to love sitting down to watch bowl games with my dad over winter break, wondering whose team would come out on top. But in recent years, we’ve found ourselves absentmindedly flipping through the games, wondering how much each university is getting paid.
College Bowl games used to be a fun and exciting tradition. There was no better way to end a winning season than with a bowl game appearance. But now that almost any team can qualify for a bowl game, a lot of universities only compete for the money and the sake of having their name on television one last time for the season. Due to mass commercialization, bowl games are no longer fun and exciting, and this winter break I definitely won’t be tuning in to see which of the 40 obscure bowl games is on ESPN.
