BAMAPHIN 22
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Vince Young's heroics in last year's national championship game made it a thrilling contest to watch. But for every Texas-USC matchup drawing 93,000 fans at the Rose Bowl, there’s 25,000 who show up for the Utah-Georgia Tech Emerald Bowl, writes contributor David Sweet.
Featuring teams such as Rutgers, Connecticut and the University of South Florida, few consider the Big East to be a fearsome football conference. But during its media day this year, Commissioner Michael Tranghese was able to brag anyway.
“All eight of our teams over the last two years have played in a bowl game,†he said. “There's no other conference in the country that can lay claim to that fact."
When the Big East is touting its bowl credentials, it’s obvious the college bowl system has run amok. Problem is, it will only be worse this year: A record 32 bowl games have been licensed by the NCAA, up from an already mind-numbing 28 last year.
Now, there are more college bowl games than days in any month. More college bowl games than flavors at Baskin-Robbins. More college bowl games than amendments to the Constitution.
Christmas comes early this year, when the first bowl game  the Pointsettia in San Diego  kicks off Dec. 19. Two weeks later, when fans weep that the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar have all been played and life is hardly worth living, they’ll be rewarded with the International Bowl in Toronto Jan. 6 and the GMAC Bowl in Mobile, Ala. Jan. 7. Of course, the new Grandaddy of Them All  the fifth BCS game  will occur Jan. 8, a full week after the once-traditional New Year’s wrap-up of bowl games.
The grand image of the college bowl  one sunny day each winter in a far-off land where the best teams in the land clash  has been diluted almost to the point of irrelevance. The phrase “lower-tier bowl†riddles the lexicon, though it should be as much an oxymoron as “poor-driving Porsche.†There’s one Super Bowl. One Hollywood Bowl. Who needs nearly three dozen college bowls?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14408233/
