I’m laughing my ass off about the hot take that arose from the ashes after Florida’s loss last night, that the SEC East isn’t all that. Amazing that it’s just dawned on some folks, considering that my last power poll of the regular season had the bottom five spots occupied by teams from the East. Duh, in other words.
The teams were nothing special and are now playing in lower tier bowl games, not exactly opportunities to showcase their hidden greatness. Beyond that, considering that Florida elected to start a quarterback who’d already announced he was transferring and Missouri’s coaches benched their best player for the bowl game, what exactly did people expect was going to happen?
Get The Picture 
Everyone blames the playoff for diminished Bowls. Yes, Bowl games are meaningless. And they have been on downward trajectory since BCS and 6-6 teams playing in 30+ Bowl games in Idaho and Shreveport and …
Make more games matter and the sport will be better off.
They are playing these games in the middle of the day in mid December.
They are meaningless and the players know it. Blame ESPN. Not players
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Hammer, meet nail. Merry Christmas, Josh! 😉
I would venture to say the games weren’t meaningless to Army and UCF.
And when you say “Blame ESPN”, you’re really saying “Blame college football fans”, because, as meaningless as these games may be to you, they still draw higher ratings than pretty much everything else this time of year.
You want to make these games mean more? Have the bowls pay the players enough NIL promo money that the top talent doesn’t skip ’em to prepare for the NFL draft.
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Merry Christmas, Sen
I am tired of the average football blog/board/Twitter commenter ragging on kids skipping bowl games.
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Especially given the number of head coaches we’ve seen bail on their teams in the last three weeks…
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Bowls pay players? That would at least bring the level of bowls up from college exhibition games to pro exhibition games.
Merry Christmas, y’all filthy animals.
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I’m not saying they should pay them all, even. Just the ones who are tempted to skip to prepare for the NFL Draft.
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How much for the top talent? A 1st or 2nd day guy who is opting out isn’t going to stay for $10,000 (maybe even $100k) when they may be risking truly life-changing money by playing. Azeez Olujari helped himself by playing. Stokes and Campbell didn’t hurt themselves by not playing. To each his own, but I like what Kirby learned from that trip to New Orleans. If you aren’t going to play, you aren’t coming on the trip.
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Ha. I didn’t see your reply but mine was similar. It would have to be a large sum of money for top flight talent to stay on for a bowl I’d guess. Free Chic-fil-a for a year and $10,000 dollar payout to stay around for the Peach Bowl won’t cut it for a 1st or 2nd round player I wouldn’t think. IMO.
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What would you have to pay a 1 or 2 round draft grade player to make him stay for a meaningless bowl? I’d guess it would have to be substantial as in 6 figure+ money, right?
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I’d play just for the swag, in the Acapulco Gold Bowl.
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I’d play for a bowl of red sensimilla…o.k. Acapulco Gold it is…but, I refuse to smoke weed with Willie again…
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If y’all would get the legislature right I could put y’all on the club membership. I was recently in Sonoma, CA and I really like the business model. Now I get a few bottles of the latest from several different wineries once a quarter or so. I could do the same with different “Vineyard Areas”
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I’ve watched just about every one of them and enjoyed them all. It’s college football, what’s not to like?
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I refuse to watch ESPN. 1) because I’m cheap and 2) because I hate ESPN.
I only watch the Dawgs when they come through on my rabbit ears. Otherwise it’s a big old helping of Scott Howard and Eric Zeier for me.
Go Dawgs.
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Scott Howard is awful.
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He’s better than hearing Chris Fowler scream.
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Lol no. Fowler is pretty good and his voice doesn’t crack like Scott’s. And who could forget Scott’s memorable call of “Chubby Time” when #27 scored a TD…barf
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I don’t love Scott Howard. And Chris Fowler’s voice doesn’t crack my eye!
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Interesting idea.
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The current narrative is always rewriting history. How quickly we forget that a couple of months ago, the media viewed UF as a peer to Alabama and a likely playoff contender.
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The shelf life of great moral victories is short.
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FU does not qualify for morale victories…never have, never will…#FTMF
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Who said FU was the least bit moral?????
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If it means we cake-walk to the secc every year for the next couple decades, I’m good with it. I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Nashville.
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I got the impression Theybwere trying to give a nod to the underutilized backs to keep them out of the transfer portal for Napier. That team wasn’t built for that. Not sure what they were built for, but it wasn’t for winning against Malzahahahan.
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Without being a pro-SEC guy – or even a knowledgeable fan – these bowl games have had some moments for average folks watching bits and pieces between holiday preparations.
Army winning on a last second field goal. UCF thrashing Florida and then having the ‘turds show their collective ass at the end? That was Christmas come early for a lifelong Gator Hater.
I’m actually getting a little nervous about Michigan, though.
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Kinda weird now that this place mocked all the people that said we didnt play anybody.
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Maybe that’s because all sorts of places found that UGA played a competitive SOS this season: Sagarin, FPI, ELO, FEI, etc.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Something, something stats.
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Well some people didn’t really go for the made up stats that didn’t really mean anything or correlate with much. But I’m glad some of you were able to play both sides of the fence with it.
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LOL
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The answer is, “Do not watch them”
The 1st bowl game i will watch is Bama vs Cincinnati.
When viewership goes down, espn will react.
Follow the money
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I enjoy the bowls on in the background myself…
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Excuses. SEC progams have more money, more talent, more coaching and more resources than the bowl teams they play regardless of a few optouts. This is 100% motivation. Does this kind of shit make us us even more proud of our schedule or less? The fact is we actually need East teams be stronger. During the reg season we need them test us, so we can be better vs the elite teams especially in the post season. We laugh at Clemson for their cakewalk through the ACC, and was this year’s slate any different for us? For a long time the SEC East has been weaker than the West. Thought it was cycling back after Mullet was hired, but no UT & FU programs have been in a perpetual dumpster they cannot seem to climb out of. Sadly, it’s us and UK until further notice.
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Fine by me…
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I hope Tennessee and Florida suck forever. It never gets old beating them (and Auburn and Fech) to a pulp.
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I hate the annual dissonance between bowl games being exhibitions and conference dominance arguments.
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Bowl games didn’t become exhibitions until the powers that be in college sports and the media (cough, cough … ESPN … cough, cough) decided a 4-team playoff (and eventually, a 12-team bracket) was best for the sport. I didn’t love in 2012 that we fell from 5 yards from a shot at the national title to the game in Orlando, but our fans showed up and showed out. That was one of the most fun bowl trips I’ve experienced (yes, that includes the Sugar Bowl following the 2002 SEC championship). The UGA and SEC chants were real and they were spectacular. The Bulldog Nation celebrated that team that day.
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For the teams that come from weaker conferences…playing against SEC teams in non-playoff bowls, It just means more.
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Ah yes the diminished SEC East courtesy of Kirby’s Alabamazation of Georgia recruiting.
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Don’t look now but we also kicked the shit out of Arkansas a d Auburn, too.
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