Bowl Picture An Evolving Masterpiece

Even as moans and recriminations still ring in our ears, marking the sad aftermath of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, college football is poised to take another step to strengthen its markedly superior postseason system of glory and reward.

Perhaps as early as next week, the NCAA’s Licensing Subcommittee will decide on applications for three new bowl games – in Washington, D.C., St. Petersburg, Florida, and in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Assuming approval, and that none of the 32 existing bowls are decommissioned, the new celebrations of prowess will allow 70 major-college football teams to appear in postseason play.

Essentially any Division I-A/Bowl Championship Subdivision/Add Your Suggestion Here team wearing football gear that musters as many wins as losses will get to play in a bowl. That opens a door so wide, even an ACC squad from the Triangle could slip through.

We refer to the old days, of course. Listening to dispatches from spring football, the arrival of new coaches has assured that grid utopia is just around the corner in Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh.

When 70 of 119 eligible BS teams, nearly 59 percent, reach bowl play, that signifies staggering inclusiveness.

Contrast this representation with the numbers achieved in basketball, which prissily calls itself a “tournament sport.” More apt would be a description as an exclusive country club.

Only 65 of 341 teams in Division I basketball reached the NCAA’s just-concluded postseason tournament. That’s about 19 percent, and five fewer teams overall than will soon enjoy bowl appearances.

Even if you throw in the fields from the NIT and the year-old Collegiate Basketball Invitational (a leap toward pointless excess fashioned by The Gazelle Group of Princeton, N.J.), you only get 113 postseason opportunities. That total represents a shade under a third of all schools competing in Division I.

And, of all those participants, only three teams go home on a victorious note.

Basketball’s contingent of the contented balloons slightly when you throw in a few pleasant tournament successes such as Davidson -- which accompanied a recent celebration of the 2008 season with a videotaped rendition of its basketball anthem, “Sweet Caroline,” recorded for the occasion by Neil Diamond and his band, wearing Wildcats T-shirts.

Still, we’re talking a relative handful of happy campers.

Football, on the other hand, has the Bowl Championship Series. The true genius of the BCS system is the absence of an elimination tournament. And, as the NCAA Task Force on Commercial Activities in Intercollegiate Athletics made clear the other day, consideration of even a modest, eight-team playoff system won’t happen any time soon.

The lack of a football playoff, frequently portrayed as a calamity of biblical proportion, is actually good news.

Add the new bowls, and soon 35 teams will end their seasons wreathed in triumph. Even if the financial payoff from some of these games is relatively small, the rewards in satisfaction, prestige, extra practice time, new experiences, and coaches’ bonuses are not to be minimized.

The 12-member ACC already has contractual arrangements with eight bowls, thereby assuring eight berths if that many conference teams muster the strength to achieve statistical mediocrity. Two-thirds participation is pretty nifty, and twice as good as the proportion of NCAA bids earned by the league’s haughty basketball programs in 2006 and 2008.

The ACC’s bowl showing does pale next to the Big East, which it raided a few years back for three of its best football programs – BC, Miami, and Virginia Tech.

Certification of a new bowl in St. Petersburg – supposedly part of the ACC’s marketing turf, witness the 2007 ACC Tournament at St. Pete Times Arena -- would lock in a game between squads from Conference USA and the Big East. The arrangement guarantees bowl possibilities for as many as seven of the Big East’s eight football-playing members.

Meanwhile the ACC will likely hitch its fiscal and competitive wagon to the new D.C. event, to be called the Congressional Bowl, at least until a more apt, if unofficial, nickname comes along. (Bicker Bowl? Gridlock Bowl?)

The proposed game is slated for new Nationals Park, which can accommodate 40,000-plus fans at a locale within driving distance of most ACC members. Service academies would provide the opposition. Navy has signed on for 2008 and the bowl committee, which plans to offer each participating school $1 million, wants to enlist Army and the Air Force Academy too

“If it gets certified, we would be very interested in it,” Mike Finn, the ACC associate commissioner most involved with football, said of the Congressional Bowl. “We’ve given them a letter of support. For this year, we really couldn’t commit a team. We can do it if we have nine (bowl-eligible) teams.”

Should the Congressional Bowl pass muster, the ACC is apt to drop its arrangement with the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl, played on New Year’s Eve in Boise, Idaho. The ACC already has one West Coast tie-in, with San Francisco’s Emerald Bowl. Each western bowl pays $750,000 to participating leagues.

Finn praised the treatment extended to visitors by the Humanitarian Bowl, but noted the considerable travel involved for ACC fans wishing to attend. Boise is 2,042 miles north and west of Washington, D.C., a bit of a drive but all but the heartiest or most desperate fan.

Last Dec. 31, Fresno State filled the berth reserved for a Western Athletic Conference team. The California FSU beat Georgia Tech, 40-28, on the blue artificial playing surface at Bronco Stadium.

A bigger payout. More numerous, satisfied boosters. More swag for the big guys – 44 of 64 bowl berths in 2007 went to the six power conferences (68.8 percent), compared to 34 of 65 bids in the 2008 NCAA tournament (52.3).

No wonder a trio of Congressmen from areas snubbed recently by the BCS called for investigation of what they contend is an anti-competitive enterprise. It doesn’t take a golfer to eye the green.