The college football bowl season was so long that even the BCS homer ESPN announcers were calling for a shorter season next year due to the sloppiness/rustiness of play in the "Championship" game between Oregon and Auburn. Apart from a bonehead decision to wear grey, white, and florescent green uniforms (what's wrong with the trad green and gold?) and a bonehead decision to go for it on fourth and goal (what's wrong with three points?), Oregon did many things right in going toe to toe with the SEC champ before falling in the last minute due to a fluke play/call. Of course, the Ducks were overmatched in sheer tonnage along the lines. But is the SEC really so dominant just because the past five NCAA champs hail from that conference? According to the ESPN broadcasters, it is. According to my analysis, it isn't.
While 10 of the 12 SEC member schools qualified for bowl games, doesn't that bring up the old argument that there are just too many bowl games designed to showcase bowl sponsors, half-empty stadiums, and mediocre 6-6 teams? A few bowl teams wound up with 6-7 records, and the diluting down of American sports quality continues. In the SEC, besides Auburn's squeaker, LSU, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi State won convincingly. On the other hand, Georgia lost to Central Florida, Tennessee fell to North Carolina, Kentucky was smashed by Pittsburgh, Arkansas was crunched by Ohio State, and South Carolina was bushwhacked by Florida State. The SEC finished with a .500 bowl average. Domination? I think not. When are they going to become a REAL conference like the Pac-10/12 by scheduling NINE conference games rather than all the cupcakes they intersperse between their sparse conference duels?
Other conferences that finished with .500 bowling records include such powerhouses as the WAC and the Mid-American, as well as the Pac-10/12. Which conference fared best? The soon-to-reconfigure, non-BCS Mountain West, with a sterling four wins and one loss, or .800 record, finished numero uno. Utah's pounding at the hands of the great Boise State was no embarrassment, either, while TCU's pancaking of Wisconsin should have embarrassed at least one BCS college president (paging Gordon Gee).
Other winning conferences from the bowl season include the non-BCS Sun Belt and BCS Big East, tied at a .667 percentage. Thanks to Notre Dame and Army, football independents finished with a .667 percentage as well. From there, it's all downhill. While the non-BCS Conference USA finished at a lowly .333, the so-called BCS power conferences of the Big 12 and Big 10 finished at 3-5 each, while the ACC finished 4-5. Many observers in the mountain and pacific time zones were elated on the first day of 2011, as the Big 10 went 0-4 on New Year's.
A final note on the solid waste of the bowl season: is it possible to require teams to have WINNING final records BEFORE becoming bowl eligible? This serves a threefold purpose. First, it prevents a bowl-appearing team from winding up with a sub-.500 overall record due to a bowl loss. Second, it would eliminate some of the incredibly cheesy and superfluous bowl games with titles like the GoDaddy.com Bowl, the uDrove Humanitarian Bowl, the R & L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, the Beef o' Brady's Bowl, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, the Little Caesars Bowl, and the AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl. Third, with the subtraction of several mundane and mediocre match-ups, it would encourage ESPN and the BCS to condense the bowl season so that it ends no more than a couple days after New Year's.
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