Put me firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp on this:
There is “growing support” among conference commissioners, athletic directors and bowl officials to increase the difficulty of becoming bowl eligible by requiring teams to have seven victories, or a winning record, when the new BCS cycle begins in 2014, multiple sources have told CBSSports.com. The seven-win requirement would also mean a handful of bowls likely would be discontinued because there would not be enough eligible teams to fill all of the current 70 berths. In the past two years alone, 27 teams with 6-6 records were needed to fill all the bowl slots, meaning nearly 20 percent of the bowl field didn’t have a winning record.
They’re going to take 13-14 schools a year out of the bowl mix? What’ll that do to the number of games?
If the winning record requirement did pass, bowl sources estimated up to 12 of the current 35 bowls could be “lopped off.”
That’s a lot of lopping. And begs the question of who’s gonna get lopped.
… Which would go by the wayside? That would not be an easy decision, especially since a number of conferences initially created these bowls to guarantee their teams would have one to play in. ESPN also has created and runs seven bowls that the network utilizes as programming. Even though they have hosted a number of 6-6 teams, it’s doubtful ESPN would willingly discontinue any of them.
Yeah, that sounds like a problem to me, too. Let’s see where all this tough talk leads when the WWL is faced with finding something else to schedule in late December.
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UPDATE: One downside to higher bowl standards…
But it’s a bad idea. For one simple reason. Raising the bowl requirement would be one more reason for teams to dumb down their regular-season schedules. One more reason to schedule three or four cupcakes in non-conference, then take your chances within the league.
It would be used as further justification to keep the SEC schedules at eight games, too.
Get The Picture 
Glad to hear they’re talking about this. We have too many bowls with too many average teams participating. Bowls shouldn’t be average. Like you though, I’ll believe it when I see it.
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Does it kill you to watch a bowl game on December 23 between two 6-6 teams?
Would you rather have watched the San Antonio Spurs play the New Jersey Nets?
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I thought they were still on strike 😉
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No. It just doesn’t particularly interest me. I’ll be the first to admit that occasionally such games are actually entertaining to watch. But I don’t think occasionally entertaining is what bowls should be about. I’d rather see fewer, better games that are unique (match ups we don’t get to see often). I realize not everyone agrees but the numbers seem to suggest that a fair amount of folks do. And no, I’m not a basketball fan.
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Does it kill you to NOT watch that bowl game?
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No it won’t kill me.
I guess there are a lot of things I could do instead of watching two teams play football.
I could rearrange my closet.
Polish my shoes.
I could spend the evening talking to my wife.
I could study the book of Duteronomy.
I could practice tying prussic and figure 8 knots.
I could smoke some cigarettes and watch Captain Kangaroo.
🙂
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Dang, they’re still showing Captain Kangaroo? That I’d watch. What channel?
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Exactly. It’s like saying “man, there’s too much oxygen in this room”. The concept of too much football is waaaay foreign to me. I was glued to the set for the NFL Champ games – like I care. Maybe I have a sickness, but heck yeah I’m watchin’ Rutgers battle it out with Uconn in Yankee Stadium. Ya know that guy was almost the coach of the bammers…
And HVL – why get a jump on your list – what will you do from Feb thru Aug if you get started on that list now? And why not skip straight to Revelations, go ahead and blow your mind!
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HVL, you said it better than I can.
What’s not to like about more football? I see no reason not to let it be.
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This push to eliminate bowls can be tied directly to the Bowls’ extortion of the Athletic Departments through mandatory ticket purchases. The AD’s were all in for new bowls for their mediocre teams until they started getting stuck paying for 5,000 tickets no one wanted.
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I have never understood all the angst from the “there are to many bowls” crowd. No one forces anyone to go or watch the games. Why should anyone care if the Sun Bowl wants to match up a hypothetical 5-7 UTEP v a 6-6 GTU to see if GTU can finally win a bowl game.
If the schools do not want to get stuck losing money on the deal they can decline. The fans can not go and not watch on TV. The advertisers can decide since no one is paying attention they do not want to spend $. TV can reduce the amount they pay or decline to cover. The city that hosts the bowl can stop. I mean simple economics dictate bowls will go away when the money is not there.
Of course once that happens instead of watching The Emerald Nut bowl I can watch more poker. Ahhh think I will take the Bowl with teams that have losing records over that.
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This is more about the panic of falling ratings than anything else. They’re flailing around trying to stabilize. The problem is that much of what’s going on is due to almost the entire postseason platform migrating to ESPN.
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+1. I was going to leave a very similar response, but you beat me to it. Do I watch most of the lower tier bowls? No. But if a city wants to host a game, two teams want to play, and ESPN wants to televise it, more power to ’em.
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I’m with you — this sounds too good to be true. I’ll be happy if it happens, though. Just wish this standard could’ve gone into effect two years ago. I don’t know a single Georgia fan who’d be disappointed had the Dawgs never come within 100 miles of the 2010 Liberty Bowl.
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Hell, they made 6-6 teams eligible just to keep teams from dumbing down their schedules when they went to 12 regular season games, or at least to make it easier to come to a consensus on going to 12 games.
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I wonder if this is also a precursor to an expansion of the regular season from 12 to 13 games. Everyone is assuming that you’ll have to go 7-5 to go bowling. But what if it’s 7-6 instead? I bet that would lop off fewer bowls…and might also make a 9-game conference season a bit more acceptable (still get 4 non-conference patsies, but would have to go 3-6 instead of 2-6 in the league to get to a bowl).
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There is no need for the CFB brass to concern themselves with limiting bowl games. ESPN pays the bills and if ratings fall far enough the WWL will find something else to fill airtime. The lesser bowls will eliminate themselves. It’s called a free market system and it will work regardless of what the CFB highhats do or do not do. “What is it exactly that you do do——-do?”
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The government needs to get involved……they’ll fix’er up…….look around….they fix stuff all the time.
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Question: Do all bowls make money? Do all schools who make bowls make$?
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Not even close..
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-12-14/news/bowling-for-chumps/
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Funny…when I read the update about the theory of dumbing-down schedules I thought it said “to make the playoffs…”. My bad. That would never happen if we had CFB playoffs. Everybody would play a tough of a schedule as possible to make the playoffs. No sandbagging there just to get to the dance. Would never happen. Nope.
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“Dumbing down the schedule”, is that even possible? This year UGA has TN and Vandy as the most attractive home games and we don’t support a ninth conference game? Those games aren’t particularly attractive, but they win by default. But as long as people will pay for garbage, I guess the AA has no real incentive to give season ticket holders more.
Well, thanks to McGarity’s scheduling, there is always the G-Day game. It could be the best match-up of 2012 in Sanford (unless we divide the units up again so we don’t get to see the groupings that will take the field this fall.) Why not offense versus defense with 1s against 1s and 2s against 2s like TN does in their spring game? There would be some spirited competition in that.
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