Ok, somebody wanna Google it and tell me just how many times the hed I was about to write comes up?

SI’s Stewart Mandel on college football bowl expansion:

Next week in Weston, Fla., organizers for three potential new bowl games will make their presentations to the NCAA’s Bowl Certification Committee. They are: The Congressional Bowl in Washington, D.C, (Navy vs. ACC); The St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg, Fla. (Big East vs. Conference USA); and the Rocky Mountain Bowl in Salt Lake City (Mountain West vs. WAC).

No, this is not a joke.

If all existing bowls earn recertification, as is expected, and if all three new contests get approved, it would raise the total number of bowl games to 35 — up from 22 less than a decade ago….

Last season there were only seven eligible teams that did not land bowl invitations. They were Troy, South Carolina, Northwestern, Iowa, Louisville, Ohio and Louisiana-Monroe. Had the three proposed new games already existed, there would have been just one team to spare.

Personally, I don’t really care how many bowls get played. If 6-6 Northwestern had been in one last year, I’d have watched it. And if Idaho and Air Force played a December game in Salt Lake City without calling it a bowl, I’m sure fans of those teams would drive to it. As Mandel notes:

Last year’s 32 bowl games netted an average attendance of 54,078, highest in eight years. The PapaJohns.com Bowl pitting Cincinnati and Southern Miss garnered a modest but respectable 2.26 rating on ESPN2. By comparison, NBA regular-season games on ESPN average a 1.3.

But this is my favorite part:

“There’s a lot of concern in our association about adding even one more game,” said Scott Ramsey, executive director of the Music City Bowl and chairman of the Football Bowl Association. “One of the worst things that could happen down the road is for the organizers of a game to spend all year preparing for it and then not have enough teams to play. It would give the bowl system a collective black eye.”


Yes, the Music City Bowl. Established 1998.