I Don't Have Time For This Bowl Crap

At 3:00 p.m. today, the institution at which I received my Bachelor's degree and at which I am currently employed will take the field for a college football bowl game as the Bowling Green State University Falcons will play the San Jose State University Spartans in the Military Bowl.  In past years, I would have already written a little bit on this blog about this bowl game, as it likely would have been at the top or near the top of my ranking of the season's college football bowl games in terms of how much watching each appeals to me. Like in previous years, that ranking would have offered an honest assessment of my interest and would have been meant to provide a counternarrative to the lists on major sports news websites that are dominated by games featuring teams from leagues that have automatic qualification for the BCS bowl games -- you know, those lists that reflect a perspective that correlates in some ways to the sentiment of outrage that was articulated when Mid-American Conference member Northern Illinois earned an invitation to one of the BCS games this year.

This year, there was no list because ... well ... there is no appeal to watching any of the games.  After deciding in August to give up college football, I have not watched a single moment of any college football bowl games this year, and I have no plans to watch any of them.  Thus, I offer no list.

I had thought about going through each of the 35 college football games and demonstrating a reason for not watching each one by pointing to some way in which one or both institutions place football in too powerful of a position, by pointing out a practice at one or both institutions that demonstrates the troubling ramifications of how football programs are run and/or financed, or by pointing out a troubling ramification of the bowl game itself.  It was easy to start seeing and finding examples for many games, but frankly, I didn't want to write the post up and scout out a link to an example to provide for every game.  College football doesn't warrant that much of my time.

So, instead, I'll just reiterate that sentiment.  My alma mater is playing in a college football bowl game today.  It's a bowl game that is problematic as a bowl game for some of its ramifications, as Michael Butterworth and Stormi Moskal have pointed out.  It's also featuring, in my alma mater, an institution that, amid a climate of concerns about rising tuition, already has its students on the hook for $50 a semester in a student fee to pay for the basketball arena that opened in 2011, yet, as reported in the Toledo Blade, members of the Board of Trustees for this institution attended a football game at the University of Akron this fall to "gain ideas for a renovation of Doyt Perry Stadium."

Yeah ... college football definitely doesn't warrant any more of my time.