Scooter Hobbs column: You can never have too many bowl games

Published 9:00 am Friday, December 16, 2022

Before you high-brows start ranting and railing about “meaningless” bowls and too dadgum many of them or even why late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has one named after him in Los Angeles, just remember this:

Mark my words. A month, maybe six weeks from now, you’ll be begging for a good, hard-fought Eastern Michigan-San Jose State matchup in the infamous Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

So don’t be such a football snob.

Email newsletter signup

I know I preach this every year, but with bowls it really is the more the merrier.

And it is the season. Be jolly. Frolic about and Tra-la-la-la-laaaah.

It all starts this morning in that football hotbed of The Bahamas, perhaps played — I don’t know — maybe on a cricket pitch … or is it a chucker?

Who cares?

It’s football. Good college football.

And Miami (Ohio) and UAB will show up in this Hometown Lenders Bahamas Bowl this morning — maybe on a beach, doesn’t matter — to do honest battle.

And there will be more and more and … never, I say, #never# enough still to come.

Where else are you going to see french fries dumped on a winning coach like in that Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, a traditional and solemn ritual which has been one-upped by a mayonaisse dump on the winner of the Duke’s Mayo Bowl?

Me, I actually like mayo globbed on my french fries — don’t judge me — so maybe those two winners should square off on a slow day in late February.

Those are naming rights you can’t really put a monetary value on.

They continue a marvelous tradition that reached new heights in our fair state with the Weedeater Independence Bowl, aka, Weed-whacker Bowl. Shreveport set the bar high, but it hasn’t stopped the likes of your assorted Cheez-It and Bad Boy Mowers bowls from giving it the ol’ college try.

But I guess my sermon to you this holiday season will not change. Just be thankful that — silly names or not, curious pairings and all — every so-called meaningless bowl is a benefit to decent society because it means four more hours that the NBA can’t lure you in and torture you with more TV time.

From the moment the nation turns its lonely eyes to The Bahamas, TV does a pretty good job of spreading them out over the rest of the month.

It allows you to give your undivided attention to, say, the Coastal Carolina-East Carolina matchup (neither of which are actual states) in the TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl (which is, I believe, an actual city).

So enjoy them. Cherish them. Shoot, it’s OK with me if you go bet on them, although many of them must give Las Vegas large headaches. So good luck with that.

Or you could try the more prudent route like me and my Bowlapalooza buddies and fashion something akin to the NCAA Tournament pool, just among friends.

It’s better than the fantasy sport silliness because your friends won’t start dashing for safe cover at your mere mention of your “team.” And it beats the basketball office pool because a couple of bad-luck losses in the early games won’t carry over to the next round and kill you the first weekend.

It’s up to you.

Pro tip: I would suggest not overthinking your picks.

Bowls have always been an inexact science.

It used to be that the trick was trying to figure which involved team has the most to play for.

Now, it seems that it’s more like which team has the most players, period.

You can thank the opt-out fad for that, complicated by the transfer portal and probably NIL.

It’s made December attrition a livelier pastime than recruiting.

Some of these teams, it seems, can save a lot of per diem overhead by traveling to their bowl site in an SUV. Or, if it’s an especially long journey, maybe a Piper Cub.

But even here there’s an upside.

The more meaningless the bowl, it seems, the fewer opt-outs you tend to have because the early exit guys make the decision to prove their future worth to the NFL by playing less football.

Never did understand that strategy.

But I’ll be up early Friday to see the festival kick off.

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com