The reason college football’s bowl season works as a television spectacle is because it happens during the holidays, when we’re all trapped together as family and eager for something to discuss in hushed tones besides so-and-so’s drug habit and such-and-such’s mistress. When those are the stakes, then hell yes let’s form some very firm and recent opinions about Wake Forest, Missouri and the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl.
To say the bowls have lost luster with the introduction of the College Football Playoff is to miss a lot of the point, which is quality sport at an odd time and location when other options are not always terribly attractive. Yes, I’m a college basketball junkie and so I was considerably more interested in the Gonzaga-Alabama game on Saturday than I was the Wasabi Fenway Bowl; I’m also the sort of degenerate who devotes Wednesday nights to whatever it is Lipscomb might have going on at a given moment. I am not a discerning consumer. I would make a terrible Nielsen household, if those are even a thing anymore.
The discerning consumer has proven, repeatedly, that they want the most disappointed programs in the Pac 12 and ACC (or, previously, the Big 12) to play in Petco Park sometime around Christmas for a championship sponsored by a local credit union. This is considered important to the people.
But why should football have all the money-raking fun of a game that doesn’t mean a terribly large amount in the grand scheme of things but makes for spectacular television? Can’t basketball get in on this?
[cues up Eye of the Tiger, begins one-handed pushups; collapses after three]
This one is really good. I think you may want to subscribe.
There are obvious hurdles. The first is March Madness, the cash cow no one should want to upset. We can’t mess with March, even if the NCAA seems bent on doing so.
So what about the week before the Super Bowl?
Typically, there’s not much else from a marquee sporting standpoint going on during that weekend. There’s an opening. League’s could leave that Friday-Sunday open on the schedule, the teams that qualify/are chosen for the “bowls”* would get a fun trip/memory/payday and those who didn’t could get a well-earned weekend off in the midst of conference season. Consider it a bastardized form of ESPN’s old Bracketbuster challenge, which was awesome and deeply missed, RIP to a real one.
* I don’t know what else to call these things, but I am open to suggestions.
If this meant conference play had to start a weekend earlier, would anyone be terribly opposed to this? If it meant certain teams played one more game than the rest—specifically, good teams, against other good teams—would anyone object?
This could work. No, scratch that—this would work. Big companies would throw money at sponsorship, either to be associated or to start some kind of marketing activation in the week before the Super Bowl, culminating in a confusing commercial on Super Bowl Sunday for the 75 percent of the populace that didn’t see the ad during our bowl weekend extravaganza. Because it’s in-season, fewer players would opt out, although coaches could choose to rest/restrict minutes and give some shine to future talent that hasn’t gotten as much run. The money wouldn’t have to be as sizable to matter in basketball: take care of the travel for the week, cut a nice high-six to low-seven figure check and every program in the country is on board.
Because we’re starting this idea anew, we don’t have to make the mistake of the old bowl system for football and put games in places no one cares about in the name of tradition (<3 you, Shreveport). We can choose hoops hotbeds and travel destinations, get people excited and be flexible because it’s a fly-by-night world during NIL, baby; here one day, gone the next. I propose 40 games, broken out by city in this fashion at least to start:
Four in New York (two at MSG, one at the Barclays Center, one at Rucker Park)
Four in Las Vegas (two at T-Mobile, two at MGM Grand Garden)
Four in Philadelphia (two at The Palestra, two at Wells Fargo Arena)
Four in Los Angeles (two at Crypto.com Arena, one at the Rose Bowl, one at Pauley Pavilion)
Three in Memphis (all at FedExForum, although if we could convince Bass Pro to refurbish The Pyramid…)
Three in Kansas City (two at the Sprint Center, one at Phog Allen Fieldhouse)
Three in Indianapolis (two at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, one at Hinkle Fieldhouse)
Three in Washington, DC (two at Capital One Arena, one at the National Mall)
Two in Louisville (one at the KFC Yum! Center, one at Freedom Hall)
Two in Lexington (both at Rupp Arena)
Two in Miami (both at State Farm Arena)
Two in Atlanta (both at FTX Arena)
One in Albuquerque at The Pit
One in Spokane at The Kennel
One in Nashville at Memorial Gym
One in a completely random, nonsensical place each year (Ireland, Mexico City, Montreal) with next to no basketball history to celebrate.
The selection process? The top-80 in NCAA in win percentage based on a date 10 days before the games are scheduled. If there are ties, someone gets screwed; before you ask who, assume it works like everything else in the NCAA and it would be the mid-majors who bore the brunt of the screwing.
How would we best choose who goes where? Chance, obviously. I assigned each spot a number, 1-40 (MSG at 1, random place 40), then used a random number generator to choose which site would have right of first refusal to the matchups, which followed a 1 vs. 80, 2 vs. 79 format, altered slightly to avoid conference overlaps and previous meetings during the season except for one matchup that was just a little too good to pass on. As always, both because this will never happen and because entertainment is the currency by which we measure everything that matters here, tie goes to the vibes. Are they good? Then they are preferred. Here’s what 2022’s version of this event might have looked like, apologies for the wonky formatting.
This is great, for so many reasons:
A legitimate classic in the making at the Palestra between Villanova and Michigan State.
Las Vegas amping up for four great games and doing a huge Vegas spectacle over the whole thing and getting, like, Red Panda for halftime of the Louisiana Tech game and Lil’ Jon to do the anthem before Akron would be deeply funny.
New Mexico State in The Pit as the home team.
Our Nation’s Capital hosting West Virginia for an outdoor sporting event tailor-made for tailgating. What sort of fine and punishment is there for burning couches on Federal lands?
UConn at MSG has some good history to it, and LSU at that time would have presented a compelling challenge.
Genuine upset alerts for San Francisco (against Arkansas in Memphis), South Dakota State (against Cincinnati in Louisville) and UAB (against Ohio State in Lexington).
For 2022, I think the random spot would have gone to Montreal. Our neighbors to the north would likely descend into chaos when Big Blue Nation rolled into town demanding Bud Light and barbecue and were subsequently served Molson’s and poutine instead.
I know that whole thing looks pretty random, but it’s also a snapshot of where college basketball was at by that point in the season.
The highest-ranked team not included in the 80? A receiving-votes Alabama, who also served as the highest-ranking exclusion by NET (24th); overall, 44 of the top 50 in NET were involved. Could we have used NET as our barometer of entry instead? Sure, but it would have skewed much more heavily toward high-majors and left out South Alabama (134th), Seattle (136th) and Cleveland State (138th), to name but a few. Again, the idea is for this to be more inclusive than not. Also, know who was in the top-80 in NET at the time? A rat Utah State team that stood at 9-8 and ultimately finished 18-16. Who gets excited for that?
How many conferences are included? Twenty-seven, including nearly 50 teams that would go on to the NCAA Tournament and 13 of 16 Sweet 16 participants and three of four Final Four squads (North Carolina really ruined this one for us).
That was last year’s edition, obviously. But, I’m already fired up for the 2023 version. If you have additional ideas for how to make this better, drop them in the comments.
Hey. You heard the man. Into the comments with you. But before you go, maybe share?
Sign me up. Unsure what this would be called though. Can't think of a fun name for this 'bowl' style weekend.