Two of its league teams will be playing each other in a bowl. Their league commissioner is livid and rightly so. It turns out the 5-7 teams of the Big Ten received preferential treatment for B1G bowls. The Mountain West tried to do some horse-trading, but to no avail.

So what you will about the MAC deals, but over the past few years the league has either worked out the iron clad contracts or has worked out deals to avoid such a nightmare.

There are too many bowls, period. Cut about three and this won't happen again, or shouldn't.

That bowl isn't even on tv. I've always been for a ton of bowls, but I think we need to shave about 3 or 4 off

35 bowls is plenty.......40....too many.

(12-06-2015 10:18 PM)T4C8 Wrote:  That bowl isn't even on tv. I've always been for a ton of bowls, but I think we need to shave about 3 or 4 off

Isn't that the point of bowl games, selling tv ads??

Glad that didn't happen to the MAC, mainly because we'd have to hear twice as many "we are humble" ads.

Let's get something straight, the Big Ten has 10 bowl tie-ins for 14 teams, it is the P5 conferences who have abused the bowl system, not the MWC or any other G5 conference.

In comparison to the Big Ten's 10 bowls for 14 teams, CUSA has 7 tie-ins for 14 teams and the MAC has 5 for 12.

ESPN's McMurphy always complaining about too many bowls, but lets get it straight about who has actually signed up for too many. Just like the Big Ten who couldn't fill all their slots so the MAC's Central Michigan goes and picks up their slack by sending CMU to cover for them in the Quick Lane Bowl. McMurphy at times acts like its the new G5 bowls that are the problem, its not, its the P5 conferences over subscribing.

(12-07-2015 02:37 AM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  Let's get something straight, the Big Ten has 10 bowl tie-ins for 14 teams, it is the P5 conferences who have abused the bowl system, not the MWC or any other G5 conference.

In comparison to the Big Ten's 10 bowls for 14 teams, CUSA has 7 tie-ins for 14 teams and the MAC has 5 for 12.

ESPN's McMurphy always complaining about too many bowls, but lets get it straight about who has actually signed up for too many. Just like the Big Ten who couldn't fill all their slots so the MAC's Central Michigan goes and picks up their slack by sending CMU to cover for them in the Quick Lane Bowl. McMurphy at times acts like its the new G5 bowls that are the problem, its not, its the P5 conferences over subscribing.

The SIMPLEST way to get rid of the glut of bowls without penalizing any conference is go to a 7-win rule.

We want teams with WINNING records for ALL CONFERENCES.

That means the B1G will not be able to fill 9 or 10 slots. We will not have 7 bowl teams. It would shave teams from most conference bowl lineups (which is a fair way to do it).

The Quick Lane Bowl would be a MAC bowl again and some obscure bowl goes under.

But there is no impetus to decrease the number of bowls. They are INCREASING. The bowls don't seem to care that 80 teams out of 128(?) will be needed. The fans of the lesser conferences' teams brag about how many teams their conference has in bowls, schools brag about how many years in a row they have been in bowls, and, most importantly, people watch bowl games and don't care about the quality of the teams involved.

Some bowls will fold--they always have--but another enterprising city/sponsor or three will crop up to take its place.

If the design was to have only the better teams, there would be 25 bowls. But that's not the design. Bowls are tv shows. Forty is better than 25 simply because it's MORE. Plug in any two teams no matter how mediocre and people are happy to watch, to bet in their bowl pools, and to brag about how their top 80 team is superior to those other 48 teams.

The number of bowls will decrease when schools quit going or people stop watching, and that ain't happening. The opposite is happening: schools promote the idea that going to a bowl=success, and coaches even have bowl clauses written in their contracts.

I'd bet there will be 41+ bowls before there are 35 again. Having a bad 5-7 team in a bowl is not a sign of the apocalypse. It's a prelude to having 4-8 teams. People will watch college football, period. No other qualifiers needed.

They need to cut the bowls down to about 30. And limit the # of bids per conference to about 6/7, keeping the $EC/P1G from getting 9/10 bids. And make it so all 8 win teams are selected before 7 win teams, and 7 win teams before 6 win teams. Make it an actualy REWARD for GOOD teams. Not a 'reward' for mediocre teams. One of the biggest arguments I hear about all the bowls is "it's a reward for the players". So, basically, the bowls are just participation trophys.

A pipe dream, I know. But I can dream.

MWC caught playing with it self.

The proliferation of bowl games over the past decade is ridiculous but I am not convinced that cutting out very many would be a good thing for the G5 schools.

In 2000 the MAC had ONE official bowl tie in and that was claimed by the 6-5 Marshall MAC champion that year. In the meantime a nationally ranked 10-1 Toledo team that had defeated that very same Marshall team by a score of 42-0 earlier in the season was passed over for an at-large Silicon Valley bowl in favor of a 6-5 Arkansas team (BTW, who lost the bowl game) while the Rockets sat at home and watched themselves get pushed out of the final poll as others with bowl wins jumped over them.

I believe that it was the year before when a 10-1 Miami team was also passed over for an at-large bowl game in favor of a mediocre North Carolina who Miami had actually defeated earlier that season in Chapel Hill.

I not sure a return to that system is all that desirable. Remember the P5 will always take care of themselves and it will be the G5 that suffers------just business as usual.

(12-07-2015 06:10 AM)emu steve Wrote:  The SIMPLEST way to get rid of the glut of bowls without penalizing any conference is go to a 7-win rule.

Though no matter what the win rule, a variable number of schools will qualify per year, which is what helps drive "safety blanket" bowls like Detroit for the ACC and Big Ten.

But:
(1) A conference can sign a primary contract with as many non-CFP bowls as the average number of 7+ win teams it has been able to provide in the past three years.
(2) Teams with 7+ wins are bowl eligible
(3) If there are more bowls with primary contracts than can be filled by Teams with 7+ wins, then teams with no fewer than 6 wins and no more than 6 losses can be offered a place, but no back-up eligible schools are eligible until and unless all 7+ win schools have a a game against a team from another conference.
(4) If a bowl chooses to proceed without two primary contracts from two different conferences, then the NCAA does not provide for waivers of eligibility requirements to allow a sufficient number of teams to go to participate in those bowls. They can proceed if they can find the teams.

Why are we getting rid of bowls? Yep, there are too many but so what. Cutting out bowls isn't going to hurt the big boys. It's going to hurt us. Why do we care if a 5-7 team goes to a bowl? Minnesota isn't going to be the only team that gets left out. So is CMU or Akron or WMU. Ask their fans if they would prefer not going to a bowl because there are too many. Just don't watch the bowl if it bugs you. Seems to me it's just complaining to complain. I'm just going to be watching the bowl games with MAC teams in them anyway.

MWC commish not happy:

http://espn.go.com/college-football/stor...izona-bowl

(12-07-2015 10:19 AM)OUVan Wrote:  Why are we getting rid of bowls? Yep, there are too many but so what. Cutting out bowls isn't going to hurt the big boys. It's going to hurt us. Why do we care if a 5-7 team goes to a bowl? Minnesota isn't going to be the only team that gets left out. So is CMU or Akron or WMU. Ask their fans if they would prefer not going to a bowl because there are too many. Just don't watch the bowl if it bugs you. Seems to me it's just complaining to complain. I'm just going to be watching the bowl games with MAC teams in them anyway.

I'd, too, rather have too many bowls than too few, as you indicate, too few means too few for the G5 conferences.

The proliferation of bowls was necessary to get bowls for G5 conferences.

I remember when the MAC has ONE bowl game, the Las Vegas Bowl, vs. the Big West (now defunct). We got the Motor City Bowl because we would have had ZERO bowls. Then we added one in Alabama and then... :)

Bowls are pretty much 'free enterprise' at its best and worst. If a city wants to host and if two conferences are interested and if sponsors are interested and a network is interested.... it happens.

No different than fast food restaurants in a city. The city will get as many as it wants and can support.

(12-07-2015 08:52 AM)T-Town Wrote:  The proliferation of bowl games over the past decade is ridiculous but I am not convinced that cutting out very many would be a good thing for the G5 schools.

In 2000 the MAC had ONE official bowl tie in and that was claimed by the 6-5 Marshall MAC champion that year. In the meantime a nationally ranked 10-1 Toledo team that had defeated that very same Marshall team by a score of 42-0 earlier in the season was passed over for an at-large Silicon Valley bowl in favor of a 6-5 Arkansas team (BTW, who lost the bowl game) while the Rockets sat at home and watched themselves get pushed out of the final poll as others with bowl wins jumped over them.

I believe that it was the year before when a 10-1 Miami team was also passed over for an at-large bowl game in favor of a mediocre North Carolina who Miami had actually defeated earlier that season in Chapel Hill.

I not sure a return to that system is all that desirable. Remember the P5 will always take care of themselves and it will be the G5 that suffers------just business as usual.

So I'm glad you have that memory. Its criminal that a 10-1 team sit at home. I agree that it's not about too many bowls per se. It's about the p5 hogging all the bowls, forcing the creation of others so that the SBC and MAC and other G5 teams with good seasons are rewarded. Expand the playoff to 8 teams. Give the top P5 a slot. By just doing that, you free up some space without creating more bowls. The other bowls with weak or low priority tie ins will die on the vine.

...and to add insult to injury for the 10-1 MU team in 1998, the bowl bid that most forecasters had Miami penciled in (Las Vegas) instead picked a 6-5 UNC team over the RedHawks. As mentioned, Miami beat UNC in the regular season, and as you might expect North Carolina had less than 1,000 fans travel out to the game. The 1995 Miami team that went 8-2-1 accomplished something no other MAC team has ever done...beat the B10 champ (NW who eneded up in the Rose Bowl)....again.... no bowl.

(12-07-2015 10:19 AM)OUVan Wrote:  Why are we getting rid of bowls? Yep, there are too many but so what. Cutting out bowls isn't going to hurt the big boys. It's going to hurt us. Why do we care if a 5-7 team goes to a bowl? Minnesota isn't going to be the only team that gets left out. So is CMU or Akron or WMU. Ask their fans if they would prefer not going to a bowl because there are too many. Just don't watch the bowl if it bugs you. Seems to me it's just complaining to complain. I'm just going to be watching the bowl games with MAC teams in them anyway.

A lot of that is laying behind what I posted.

Cutting bowls is grabbing the stick by the wrong end. The problem can be pinned down a lot better than "too many bowls": the problem is insurance bowls by P5 conferences for the occasional down year when they only get their minimum number of schools in the NY6. But they can't all have the minimum number in the same year, so the "insurance bowls" are regularly going to be coming up short.

You let conferences sign with bowls based on the number of 7+ win schools ... rounded to the closest whole number ... its not the MAC that would have to have a smaller set of "primary commitments", it's the Big Ten.

And requiring 7 win schools to have a place before 6-6 schools become eligible is primarily protecting Go5 schools in any system where bowls are not simply a free for all.

(12-08-2015 09:15 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(12-07-2015 10:19 AM)OUVan Wrote:  Why are we getting rid of bowls? Yep, there are too many but so what. Cutting out bowls isn't going to hurt the big boys. It's going to hurt us. Why do we care if a 5-7 team goes to a bowl? Minnesota isn't going to be the only team that gets left out. So is CMU or Akron or WMU. Ask their fans if they would prefer not going to a bowl because there are too many. Just don't watch the bowl if it bugs you. Seems to me it's just complaining to complain. I'm just going to be watching the bowl games with MAC teams in them anyway.

A lot of that is laying behind what I posted.

Cutting bowls is grabbing the stick by the wrong end. The problem can be pinned down a lot better than "too many bowls": the problem is insurance bowls by P5 conferences for the occasional down year when they only get their minimum number of schools in the NY6. But they can't all have the minimum number in the same year, so the "insurance bowls" are regularly going to be coming up short.

You let conferences sign with bowls based on the number of 7+ win schools ... rounded to the closest whole number ... its not the MAC that would have to have a smaller set of "primary commitments", it's the Big Ten.

And requiring 7 win schools to have a place before 6-6 schools become eligible is primarily protecting Go5 schools in any system where bowls are not simply a free for all.

While I am 100% behind your idea it's just not going to happen. There is no way in he11 that the big boys would let a rule be put in place that hurts them and helps us. They'll just find an end run around it like they did with the RPI in basketball a few years ago. I think it was 2005 they tweaked the RPI to give more weight to road teams. That obviously killed the power conferences since they don't play road games, particularly against mids. So what happened? The committee decided to deemphasize the RPI. They've thrown us a bone and allowed a bunch of crappy new bowls into existence so we'll just slink away. Money talks and they've got it.