Jimbo Fisher: "... Winning the Orange Bowl doesn't mean anything." Duh, There are 42 Bowl Games!

In a moment of candor, FSU coach Jimbo Fisher actually said the following, something he’s going to get grilled about next time he meets the media:

"“I’m worried winning the Orange Bowl doesn’t mean anything. When I was a kid … we still had a national champion but [the other bowls] still mattered. Now if you go 12-2 and win an Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl or Cotton Bowl or Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and you say that’s not enough? There’s something wrong with that now,” Fisher said. “When you’re 12-2 there’s not much better you can do. You might get over the hump [to the playoffs] but how many times?”"

Let’s start with his second sentence. How do you define “kid?” When Fisher was nine years old in 1975, there were just 11 bowl games. Of course they all mattered.

In 1980, when Fisher was 14 years old, there were still only 15 bowl games. By 1990, Fisher was no longer a kid, but there were still only 19 bowl games – and eight of them were on New Year’s Day.

But then college football became big business after the turn of the century, and coaches of middle-tier programs (and highly-paid athletic directors, too!) realized that a great way to put lipstick on the pig of a .500 season was by simply getting to a bowl game.

Suddenly there were 25 bowl games in 2000, 35 bowl games in 2010, and next season there will be 42 bowl games, meaning that 65 percent of teams play in a bowl game. It aligns nicely with our “everyone gets a trophy” society.

I love football. I enjoy gambling. Those are two completely independent thoughts/discussions from what Fisher said above. He’s exactly right – the large majority of these bowl games no longer matter and winning them doesn’t mean anything. They’re exhibition games.

Yes, said exhibition games get TV ratings because when everyone is burning a week of vacation around Christmas, what else are they going to watch on TV when stuck at home because it’s 10 degrees outside? All TV shows are in re-runs, and most nights, these bowl games are the only thing on TV. And if you make a silly, apples/oranges NCAA Tournament vs. Bowl Game rating comparison, you get this.

Want to make some of the bowl games matter? Let’s get an 8-team or 16-team playoff on the books. You could dump more than a dozen of these “bowl games” and the only people who would lose are the executives running the games (some of whom are crooks, anyway).