If you're like me then you have a sickness that's been inside you since a little kid, you just can't turn off or turn away from a college football game, and chances are if you are reading this you know exactly of what I speak. However, on Saturday even the most hardcore amongst us were tested by what was put out on the field. I mean, could there have been a worse set of five games in the history of a single bowl game day?
We had games that ended like this: 33-14, 38-14, and the most brutal of them all… a 62-28 beatdown. It was truly sucktastic and it made me want to give up all hope on college football to be quite honest, but then… but then, we finally got two "good" games to cap off the night.
Unfortunately the problem was that like most of the country, I was waving the white flag and had had enough. We're all humans and realistically we can only take so much punishment before we just give in, right?
That's the problem that college football faces on a more broad sense, especially in the wake of declining viewership to begin with. More games on TV is awesome if you're addicted to the game, but it also exposes the downside, which is the frequent and unwatchable butt-kickings that get handed out week in and week out.
Putting three games in a row, that were about as sucktastic as any this bowl season, in front of the general public that had nothing better to do than sit around watching college football was not a good look to say the least. Talk about blowing your chance to showcase yourself? Good lord.
Sure, it was mildly cool to see the snow falling at Yankee Stadium and it was pretty neat watching football with superimposed yard markers and lines for easier guessing and viewing at home, but the novelty of seeing that can only last for so long.
Ultimately, it's about the football being played and when it was as craptacular as it was to start off on Saturday we all lose. Well, all of you lose… I won 'cause I didn't have to attempt and write up some poetic justice piece to games that had zero poetry to them. So, perhaps I should say thank you to the college football gods for that?
Nah, instead the college football fan in me was rather unhappy to put it mildly. As Saturday went on I was more and more drawn to want to do anything else. I found myself doing something I don't ever do on Saturday's in the fall – grabbing the remote and hitting the guide button to start channel surfing – I know, the horror, right?
In the end though I was still somehow pulled in, call me a glutton for punishment if you will, but as they say – persistence and patience pay off – and on Saturday night those of us who hadn't completely given up hope were redeemed for doing so…. Sort of.
So, thank you to the Valero Alamo Bowl and the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl (damn, now I'm hungry for wings and chili con queso… damn you marketing geniuses!!) for bringing the day to a not sucktastic ending. O.k., that may be a bit of a stretch for the BWW Bowl, but hey, who doesn't love seeing a team play so bad on offense that they pull their starting QB, go all trick play on us, put the QB that was pulled back in and yet come away with the win?
Perhaps, that's poetic justice for what we all suffered through on Saturday as college football fans, writers, and aficionados. So, if you're like me and never gave up totally on Saturday give yourselves a round of applause and welcome to the addiction that is college football bowl season!
