Best-ever package on corrupt aspect of bowl games

Through the tax deductions. Corporate expenditures that are written off as deductions are tax revenues that have to be made up from other sources (or absorbed by budget cuts).

The sponsoring organizations write off much of the cost as "promotional expense," when in fact much if not most of that money ends up getting slurped up by the bowl organizers. So, essentially, your town gets to go without road repair, trash pickup, fire, police, schools, hospitals, whatever the hell, so that the Gasbag Bowl Committee gets to have a few hundred thousand (or million) more bucks in the kitty.

 

I never realized that teams actually LOST money on going to these bowls. Reading this piece has really opened my eyes on how crooked and bizarre the bowl system really is.

If only one could get the job running the bowl. Can you say license to print money?

Maybe along with the lowered gas prices, our economic difficulties will lead to a culling of the bowls. That'd be a start. Why does every city above 100,000 folks need a bowl game anyway? Who the hell wants to spend their bowl trip in Detroit, Toronto, Boise or Albuquerque anyway?

 

Telander swore, in the forward or the prologue, he was getting out of sportswriting when he wrote that book.

 

Dear John Swofford:

Read this, please. Dan Wetzel sees through your crap, too:

They loathe sharing any money with anyone. It’s the basis for the BCS in the first place. They’ve created their own television networks, websites, basketball tournaments and marketing departments.

They’ve even created their own de facto bowls (i.e. conference championship games). The SEC game did $13.7 million in revenue in 2007, allowing the conference to pocket almost $12 million in profit.

The ACC saw that and decided that its own 51-year history was worth selling. In 2004 it forever altered its Tobacco Road roots by expanding from New England to South Florida. A chief motivation was so it could stage its own title game. (It hasn’t worked; the ACC game has been low-rated and poorly attended.)

If the ACC had just joined up with another league and muscled out say two bowls it currently sends teams to – the Chick-fil-A alone had $12.3 million in revenue in fiscal 2007 – one of the motivations for expansion would have been gone.

Instead it cared more about the tradition of a fast food restaurant than its own.

-----

Signed,
An ACC fan who isn't fooled

 

Pretty solid read. The writer's style (in the first part) reminds me a lot of Matt Taibbi.

I have some bowl preview shit to work on this week and this will all be in the back of my mind.

 

Just a reminder....I've yet to see anyone anywhere come up with a way that the bowl system HELPS college football.

 

It creates quality matchups between teams that would probably never otherwise play.

 

And a playoff wouldn't?

If you say no, then clearly it's not the bowl system creating these matchups, it's the idea of a postseason. If you say yes, then, please explain.

 

If there is only a playoff and no bowl games, then yes it would rob the public of some interesting matchups. We can argue all day long about how we want college football's season to end. But bowls are better than simply voting on a champ after the conference title games and going home.

 

Oh, there's no doubt about it. If given the choice between the bowls and what the NCAA used to have, I'd take the bowls.

But, really, it's like being a vegetarian and being forced to choose between a cheeseburger and veal. Is the cheeseburger less offensive? Yes. It is what you want? No, it's the opposite.

 

I'll be honest. I don't give a shit about matchups that have no means to an end.

My alma mater versus Tulsa could be construed as an interesting matchup, I suppose. But if Ball State played Tulsa in a playoff game, it would be an interesting matchup that I, and many others, would actually give a shit about.

I mean, is the world going stop turning if BYU and Arizona don't get to participate in a bowl game?

That says nothing of the fact of whether there's any merit to these bowls or a bowl bid itself. Six wins and you get to the postseason? Knock me over with a feather.

You and I are both Wisconsin fans, Pope, did the Badgers deserve -- in any way, shape or form -- a bowl bid this year? You know in your heart of hearts they're partially, hell, primarily in because of a rabid fanbase and the money they bring to the table. It sure as hell had nothing to do with any accomplishment they had during the regular season.

 

There's no reason you can't have a playoff and bowls, too. There's an NIT in basketball, right?