Throwback Thursday: Vanishing Bowls

I really miss the New Years Day Bowl games. Oh, some games are still played on that first day of the New Year. This coming year they won't be as the NFL has dibs on the day. So, its the second day of the New Year this time around. It doesn't really matter anymore as it just isn't the same as it was back in the day. The BCS has hacked up college football. In trying to keep the Bowl Games they've destroyed them. I loved the dawn to dusk and beyond run of big Bowl Games on New Years Day. Each game was huge. Each on the level of a championship game. Each with a traditional matchup. The voters settled things after the game but on that day everything was settled on the field. Maybe that is part of the disaster that is the BCS. All the bickering and controversy takes place before the games. It creates a cloud over the games before the teams even play. To begin with the BCS is a mess. Then it becomes a bigger a mess when it spits out the matchups. This mess simply detracts from the games. The old, beautiful Bowls mostly had set matchups. It was up to the teams to earn those matchups. College football is such a wonderful thing. The big, beautiful Bowl games brought out the best in the college game. The pageantry. The schools. The colors. The kids. Everything seemed so pure and simple. Just football. Now, the cloud starts to settle about the time of the first BCS rankings. It just gets darker after that. The Bowl games just aren't the same.