Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Why It's More About How The Money is Distributed Than It Is About How Much Is Distributed When It Comes To The Bowls

"Overall, the Sugar Bowl spent $11.1 million in 2006 alone. The SEC operated its 2007 Championship Game (in effect a bowl game) for just $2.1 million. The ACC managed to pull off its 2006 title game for $1.2 million.

It’s not easy making a single, three-and-a-half-hour football game cost over $11 million; which might explain why the Sugar Bowl has an actual 'committee on golf'."


These are some of the more remarkable facts revealed in the article linked above. Kaufman sums it up at Salon, pointing out that the NCAA has no power over the postseason, and this seems to be the reason that the bowl committees want things to continue as is--their profit margin is actually much lower than a postseason under an NCAA guided playoff structure would be, so the money-interests argument gets a little more complicated at this point. Defending this bowl system is starting to sound similar to defending health insurance companies. The deal that ESPN has with the bowls could help explain why the defenders of playoffs at ESPN is a lower proportion to defenders of playoffs not working for ESPN--but these kinds of (ideological) arguments are tricky since, consciously, and spontaneously, they really believe in the bowls.

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