[ChicagoCard]

People forget that the entire bowl system is not created as a reward for teams that perform well during the season. Rather, bowls exist to increase tourism revenue for the host cities and make money for the stadium owners. The student-athletes and rewarding performance is completely secondary to making money. March Madness this is not. There is a lot of money on the line for these bowls, and making sure that the bowls can sell the tickets and fill hotel rooms is the primary consideration in place. TV ratings are a consideration as well, but not as big a factor. So the conference has to give and take with their bowl sponsors, allowing them to maximize their revenue while maintaining some semblance of a reward system for a successful campaign.

Although that's true, and I certainly remember hearing this from people defending Virginia Tech and Michigan last December, it's also true that during the season the objective seems to be to play well and win games so that teams can get into a good bowl game, if not BCS game. It’s almost a form of bait and switch once you’ve ended up with last season’'s Virginia Tech and Michigan. My personal opinion in a world where you can'’t have everything is that I wish there were no conferences larger than 10 teams (everybody plays each other), no conference championships, and therefore just 12 games played. Then have an 8-team playoff (that’'d be 8 down from the current 10 BCS teams much closer to 8 based on merit). I like the number 6 a bit better -- top 5 plus 1 -- but I can’t see having teams 3-6 do a playoff while 1 and 2 sit and wait. The bowls can get in on the playoff, maybe do a rotation. Always will be talk of preserving the bowls but never mention how the system has changed over time anyway.

[ChicagoCard]

People forget that the entire bowl system is not created as a reward for teams that perform well during the season. Rather, bowls exist to increase tourism revenue for the host cities and make money for the stadium owners. The student-athletes and rewarding performance is completely secondary to making money. March Madness this is not. There is a lot of money on the line for these bowls, and making sure that the bowls can sell the tickets and fill hotel rooms is the primary consideration in place. TV ratings are a consideration as well, but not as big a factor. So the conference has to give and take with their bowl sponsors, allowing them to maximize their revenue while maintaining some semblance of a reward system for a successful campaign.

Although that's true, and I certainly remember hearing this from people defending Virginia Tech and Michigan last December, it's also true that during the season the objective seems to be to play well and win games so that teams can get into a good bowl game, if not BCS game. It’s almost a form of bait and switch once you’ve ended up with last season’'s Virginia Tech and Michigan. My personal opinion in a world where you can'’t have everything is that I wish there were no conferences larger than 10 teams (everybody plays each other), no conference championships, and therefore just 12 games played. Then have an 8-team playoff (that’'d be 8 down from the current 10 BCS teams much closer to 8 based on merit). I like the number 6 a bit better -- top 5 plus 1 -- but I can’t see having teams 3-6 do a playoff while 1 and 2 sit and wait. The bowls can get in on the playoff, maybe do a rotation. Always will be talk of preserving the bowls but never mention how the system has changed over time anyway.