The House of Blue

Thats fine, I dont have a problem with the way you feel, its your right to feel that way. I dont plan on watching many of the bowls because I just am not interested in teams that are in them. I love college ball and will watch several games since they will be my last. I watched the Cats when they went to a bowl , heck I played in a bowl game 36 years ago and loved every minute of it and so did my family. Im not talking specifically about the players but the system that says .500 or in some cases worse than .500 is rewarded with a bowl named after some company that puts up the cash.

Yes, there are teams in the NCAAT at barely above .500 or worse...in fact, college basketball is a sport where you could theoretically go winless in the regular season, string together 4 wins in a conference tournament, and be eligible to win a national title......and again, no one is forcing you to watch the bowls......and if they are, tell them I said to stop.

The problem with .500 or 6-6 being good enough to go to a bowl, is the dramatic differences in strength of schedule from one team to the next. Should a 6-6 SEC or Big10 team deserve a bowl? I think yes. Should a 6-6 C-USA team go to a bowl? I say maybe, but only if they happened to play 4 BCS conference teams in their 4 out of conference games. I would like for there to be a strength of schedule indicator, or threshold. For instance, in order for any team to even be eligible for a bowl at 6-6, they will need to have at least a SOS in the top 55 (that's just an arbitrary number that I pulled out of the sky). In order to implement a rule like that there would need to be a study done to determine a correct SOS cutoff. There will still be arguments for one team that didn't get in versus one team that did. But, at least there would be something in place on paper to determine the difference. One great additional benefit to such a rule would be the incentive for schools to schedule more competitive out of conference opponents. They'd still look for 4 automatic wins, but they would be forced to skate closer to the parity line than teams have been doing in recent years.

I guess you know most bowls are for the promoting and monetarily enhancing the city in which they are played. Forcing a Bowl Committee (city representative) to take one 6-6 team over another may not be in their best interests (such as having to invite at team that brings no fans over one that does) and, let's face it, the cities do it for their own self interest.

I agree that the host cities motivation for having the bowl there is a $$$ and city promotional thing but in the end the reason a bowl exists is for the self interest of the company that sponsors the bowl in the first place. I dont begrudge the teams,players or cities the chance to play in a bowl but my whole point for this thread was to object to the criteria that is used to fill these bowls. Have you seen the names of some of the bowls? The only bowl name I havent seen is the "Toilet Bowl" but I hear that will be added next year and the criteria for this bowl is that the teams have to have at least 1 win each to be eligible. Just kidding of course but I hope you get my point. Thanks for responding to this thread.

Not if its like a team like LA Tech that is exciting to watch and had a 9-3 record. They could have gone to a bowl but took too long to respond but another bowl should have offered. The Duke team regardless of the reason for the 6-7 record, it is a losing record and not worthy of a bowl bid and I would say the same about a UK team that was 6-7. Its just not bowl worthy. IMO. Thanks for responding