Bowl schedule needs tweaking 01-02-11

For about a week, I heard the promos on television for Saturday, Jan. 1, bowl games, pushing the fact that there would be three SEC vs. Big Ten games. For those in the south, and for the folks in Big Ten country, this meant a living room of football for the holiday.

So Saturday came, I settled down and looked at the TV schedule of these big bowl games. I was a little stunned when I realized that all three matchups were on at the same time.

For those of us living in Florida, who had a great bowl season with a lot of big wins, it was obvious that most of us would watch Urban Meyer's last game, as he battled Joe Paterno. But Alabama vs. Michigan State and Mississippi State vs. Michigan, the latter coming from Jacksonville, were on “the ESPN family” of channels, as they kept saying.

I really felt sorry for the folks in Michigan. The state really has only two teams of note, and they were both playing at the same time. With “Capital Bowl Week” going on for several days, you have to wonder why these games weren't staggered.

So I watched the Gators, then the Rose Bowl came on. I have to admit that many years ago I got sick of hearing about the “granddaddy of all bowl games,” and Wisconsin vs. TCU had only minimal interest because of TCU being undefeated. After that we got a real “thriller,” Oklahoma vs. Connecticut in the Fiesta Bowl, so it wasn't as wild a football day as I originally imagined.

My team, no secret, is Notre Dame, and the Irish really put it to Miami on Friday, so maybe they're on the way back.

But hopefully, in the future, the TV people who schedule the starting time of the bowl games (Surely you knew that TV controls everything) will try to do a better job of scheduling the games. And maybe it's time for the “granddaddy” of bowl games to retire.