Remember what bowl season used to mean around here? You earned your way to the Rose Bowl or the Outback or even the Alamo and you knew that team had been through a whole dang season together. Twelve games of blood and sweat and grinding through the Big Ten schedule. Now I see these preseasson magazines starting to land and everybody is talking about the College Football Playoff like it is the only thing that matters. We played in the 1994 Rose Bowl and I still get chills thinking about that day in Pasadena. That team had seniors who had been in the program for four or five years. They bled red and white. You cannot tell me that any of these bowl games mean the same thing when half the roster can just pack up and leave before the game even happens.
The SEC and Big Ten are sitting there with their hands out demanding more control and talking about this revenue sharing bill like they are doing us a favor. Back when Coach Alvarez was building this program we did not need super leagues and billion dollar TV contracts. We needed kids who wanted to play at Camp Randall in November. That is what made this place special. Now we are going to play Notre Dame on a Monday afternoon this fall and I am supposed to get excited about that. Monday afternoon football. What happened to the New Year's Day bowls? What happened to traditions that actually meant something? The sport sold its soul for television money and I am tired of pretending otherwise.