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But A Playoff Would Take Up Too Much of the Student-Athletes' Studying Time

The Bowl Championship Series championship game (there's an event that could use a snappier moniker) will be played on Monday, January 10. That is to say that the end of the college football season will take place closer to the Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday national holiday than it will to New Year's Day.

Not only that, but the offbrand bowls no longer know their place, either, with many of them, including the Fight Hunger Bowl BC is playing in, being played well after the Christmas tree has been placed on the curb and futile New Year's diets have begun.

This is all because not enough people watch college basketball on TV. Needing more programming for its voracious maw, ESPN bought the broadcast rights to just about ALL the bowls, dribbling out the broadcasts at a rate of one per night (there's more than one on Jan. 1 and a couple of other days. Since there are, what, 35 bowl games or so, the bowl season must be extended to match the network's need to show something besides Dick Vitale and NFL studio shows in January.
ESPN's admittedly brilliantly successful business rests on two strategic thoughts. 1. Nothing succeeds like excess and 2. American sports fans will put up with anything. I expect that by 2015, the BCS title game will take place about four days before the start of the Ohio Valley Conference basketball championship tournament.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:34 AM