No, there aren’t too many bowl games.
The following compilation of words, witticisms and in all likelihood, life-changing enlightenment, will be based upon a wholly unoriginal premise.
That said, being that it’s my own fingers doing the typing I would also be foolish to suggest that it’ll be anything but eminently worth your while to read regardless.
And so, if you were somehow unaware, as of last Friday we as inhabitants of this planet have kicked off one of the most joyous portions of the sporting calendar— Bowl Season.
To the uninitiated these next few weeks will consist of a seemingly endless smattering of games taking place on odd days, at odd locales and presented by even odder corporate sponsors.
But you know what? It’s all totally worth it, and I for one will not hear a single word to the contrary.
Because there for damn sure aren’t too many bowl games, folks — and I’m going to tell you why.
Perfectly good arguments that I don’t even need
Now I won’t overcomplicate things here and lay out the myriad of reasons for which college football’s vast, convoluted bowl season is beautiful just the way it is.
I won’t regale you with tales of the scenic, historical significance of the Rose Bowl and the games it has hosted against the jaw-dropping background of a late afternoon Pasadena sunset upon the San Gabriel Mountains.
I won’t offer up a pop-quiz as to the most perfect bowl game/sponsor combination of all-time (the correct answer here is the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, by the way.)
And I promise to also refrain from basing my argument on any of the singularly magical games/moments of bowl season’s past.
Because I could, you know.
No really, I totally could.
No, really.
And be it the action occurring on the field or the ‘action’ taking place far away from it, there has always been plenty to keep folks engaged in postseason college football — even amidst all of the other festivities of the most wonderful time of the year.
Hell, some of you might very well be relying upon it to ensure that Santa can deliver presents under the tree…
(May God help you all.)
The point is, I’m not going to fall back on any of those (totally legitimate) things in order to make my case.
Why? Well, in reality it’s just far simpler than that.
Don’t wish it away
The prevailing sentiment that I will forevermore apply to bowl season is actually rooted in a comment that I first recall hearing some version of from Marc Morehouse, a longtime phenomenal sportswriter for the Cedar Rapids (IA) Gazette.
“Don’t wish it (football) away,” he’d say as the latest season neared its conclusion, and a person here or there — typically on social media — would remark how they were ‘tired of the deluge of bowl proceedings,’ and/or more or less content that the latest season was finally closing in on its end.
I really can’t put it much better than that.
Don’t wish it away.
Why would you?
The sport of college football — the actual games anyway — is essentially a four-month endeavor. That’s it.
From September through early January, we get the action, the bands, the indelible school colors/uniforms (and some not-so-indelible ‘alternate’ versions), the tailgates, the fans.
For four months we get to bask in all of the wonderment that college football has to offer. And then it’s gone.
Not for another two-thirds of the calendar (roughly 240 days) will we be able to live in the brand new moments and memories that the sport continues to give us.
All we can do is wait.
And I accept that fact as the natural course of things, for any sport, but college football’s window is smaller than any other. So why wish it away?
I’m not saying there aren’t weeks in-season when a Saturday gets particularly long — especially when my teams lose — and occasionally I’ll even unplug from the action entirely.
But I always come back. I’ll be there on Sunday morning, watching highlights from around the country to keep myself abreast of how the latest season’s story is unfolding. Because I know full well that it’ll all be over soon yet again.
Before you know it, we’ll find ourselves planted firmly in December, bowl games all around, and the season’s end bearing down upon us.
We’re there right now.
As someone who loves this sport and invests in it each and every fall that it arrives back in my life, there’s no way in hell that you’re going to catch me actively wishing for it to end.
Bowl season is the last we’re going to get of it for almost eight months, so by all means go ahead and stuff the schedule with as many matchups as humanly possible — sponsorships, venues, kick times be damned.
A few months from now in the dark recesses of the offseason fans will be jonesing for a RoofClaim.com Boca Raton Bowl or a Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl to sink their teeth into.
And if you’re not quite that level of an enthusiast for the sport, or even just a casual viewer at best, then what the hell do you care how many bowl games there are?
You go do your thing and leave the rest of us be, watching a bunch of ‘exhibition’ games with silly names in bizarre settings to ring in the New Year — and close out the old that was the 2021 college football season.