By the way, the champion of college football is crowned tonight. Yeah, all the world’s New Year’s party hats are currently decomposing in your nearest landfill, and that’s still going on.
The college bowl situation has now expanded to a point where teams with barely mediocre records are invited to the Dollar Tree Brand Pantiliners Playoff, and it’s not so much of an honor to trundle one’s season past the fall semester anymore.
This all used to mean something… Via
Case in point: When I texted my brother-in-law to congratulate him on the dubious achievement that his alma mater had been invited to a Z-tier game against an opponent nobody had ever heard of before, he answered, “Wait, did we even have a winning record this year?” I live in the city in which the bowl took place, and not only previously had no idea that the game even existed, but when I was sent a photo from inside the stadium, the schools’ bands outnumbered the spectators.
(And no, I’m not naming the bowl, because the only thing I hate more than an empty bowl invitation is the sponsor which shelled out for it. They get no free publicity from me.)
I’m told money is made on these things, that the players receive swag bags worth thousand of dollars, that the schools appreciate the publicity and the sponsors are glad of the wall-to-wall advertising. Maybe the sousaphone player who dots the I in Script Ohio is glad to have one more go of it, too (although I submit this would all be worth it for that alone; have you seen Script Ohio?) But it seems an inside game– and whoever takes home the championship tonight may well have lost a bit of glory to the endless noise of the endless bowls.
