So far, bowls haven’t improved their reputation

Published 6:51 pm Sunday, December 24, 2017

Come on, Bowl Season. Straighten up and fly right. You’re better than this.

I spend half my happy holidays defending you and your excesses. Don’t let me down now.

This country has fought many wars with great sacrifice to protect this nation’s alienable right for a 6-6 team to get itself some bowl swag — even a 5-7 team, if absolutely necessary.

It makes all those summer-camp participation trophies worthwhile.

Don’t mess it up now. We’ve come too far in this long struggle for month-long bowl access. So, like, get your act together already.

I know I’ve been ridiculed over the years for standing by you. I rose tall and proud in your defense, did it with total disregard for personal safety and reputation, such that it was.

So how come, so far, most of your actual games this season are stinking to Timbuktu?

We deserve better than this. You deserve better than this. You owe us better than this.

Hey, it’s on TV. We’re going to watch no matter who’s playing. The games are supposedly meaningless — or so the football snobs try to tell us — so there’s no real pressure on you.

Give us some good games — on weekdays as well as the weekend.

Especially on the weekdays.

The Saturdays have been kind of OK. Go Army. And thank goodness for Texas Tech and South Florida in the Birmingham Bowl Saturday.

But the bowls system’s true benefit to mankind is knowing that from mid-December forward you can tune in any night, even weeknights and some afternoons, and catch college football.

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Thursday was typical.

I couldn’t wait to watch the Temple-Florida International game, just to hear if the announcers could say “Bad Boy Mowers Gasparillo Bowl” real fast without giggling (for most part they did; good for them).

It was double cool that there was all manner of lawn-attacking machinery strewn about the stadium — the Bad Boys, whoever they are, were getting their corporate-sponsored money’s worth — but the game was a dud, Temple 28-3, and not really that close.

The only suspense was trying to remember whether FIU was the one where Little Lord Lane Kiffin was coaching or was it that other Florida Something-or-Another. It was the other one. Florida Atlantic squeaked past Akron 50-3 with Kiffin cackling all the way.

Not to worry, my favorite bowl name was the next day, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. It turned infamous when relatively anonymous Wyoming decapitated Western Michigan from wire to wire before settling on a 37-14 final.

That was the close game of the week.

There was a stretch of four midweek bowls where the combined final scores were 170-25.

SMU was the only one of those losers to crack double figures — and lost 51-10 to Louisiana Tech. Six turnovers didn’t help any.

I know. I watched it all.

Of course, I’m hopelessly addicted to bowls. I even listen to this stuff on the radio when stuck in this holiday traffic. During a quick toe-tap shopping spree Friday I left UAB on the radio playing football like it was its first year attempting the game (which it was, after a two-year hiatus) and the scoreboard was reflecting it grotesquely.

But after not finding the gift I was looking for and reentering the car, the radio breathlessly announced that suddenly there was evidence of a noticeable buzz on the UAB sideline, that it was ballgame on for the re-energized … whatever mascot UAB has.

It got me excited. Ready to rush to the nearest TV.

False alarm. Turns out UAB had just cut the score to 31-6, but it got the radio guys excited enough to finish out Ohio’s 41-6 drubbing.

This kind of stuff is not helping our cause.

This is the wrong ammunition for the elite crowd who think getting a bowl invitation is reserved for 10-win teams.

The same nitwits who’d like to see a 16- or 24-team playoff get all bent out of a shape when a team that won’t be invited to the White House gets to go to the Camelia Bowl.

Maybe there’s still hope.

The big boys start getting out for recess this week. Perhaps that will stir things up.

If not, the snobs are laying in wait, ready to pounce and decree that this is just more proof that — wait for it — there are just too many bowls.

Ignore them.

We’ll get through this.

 If you think there are too dadgum many bowls, just wait until Christmas Day, that most joyous day of the year … except that pro basketball hijacks the festivities and force-feeds us the water-drip torture of wall-to-wall NBA.