Just saw the CBS Sports piece about six straight unique Big 12 champions and it got me thinking about bowl season and how we used to do things. I remember back in the 1998 season when we went to the Sun Bowl against USC and it meant something different. You earned your way to a specific bowl based on where you finished in the conference standings, not some committee picking names out of a hat. The Alamo Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Holiday Bowl, these places had history. You knew if you won eight games you were going somewhere with tradition.
Now we got this 24-team playoff talk with the ACC joining the Big Ten and Big 12 to put pressure on the SEC and I just shake my head. What happened to the bowls? What happened to the old system where the Fiesta Bowl on New Years Day was the biggest game of the year? We used to circle the Bluebonnet Bowl on the calendar and it was a big deal. I remember when we played in the 1994 Independence Bowl and the whole town shut down to watch. Kids today will never understand what it felt like to wake up on January 1st and watch the Rose Bowl knowing that was the pinnacle.
The 24-team model means half the sport gets a participation trophy and the bowls become scrimmages for the teams that didnt make the cut. Back in the 2000 season when we beat Southern Miss in the Mobile Bowl, that game meant something because we earned it the old fashioned way. We grinded through a season and got rewarded with a trip somewhere warm. Now you got guys opting out of bowl games to prepare for the draft and half the roster is in the portal before the kiickoff. Coach Patterson would have never allowed that nonsense.
I miss the days when the Cotton Bowl was our super bowl and the Southwest Conference champion went there. That was real football. Not this expanded playoff nonsense where everybody gets a ribbon.