Is Bowl Season Over Yet?

In a little over three weeks, college football fans will be immersed in what has become known as “Bowl Season.”

As exciting as things can become once the calendar changes, it’s that lull before Christmas until the end of the year that continues to fall into an abyss of indifference and gluttony in the all-you-can-stomach mentality that has become the postseason.

At best, any bowl game played before Jan. 1 simply should be referred to as a warmup or a “spring training” of sorts.

Fresno State Coach Pat Hill put it best recently after his team’s victory over San Jose State, which gave the Bulldogs the inside track to a bowl berth.

“We understood what was at stake. [There was] no nervousness,” Hill said.

Which makes complete sense, since, after all, he was talking about a chance to play in the stinking Silicon Valley Classic. What’s there to be nervous about?

And while we’re at it, do we really need the Mobile Alabama, Las Vegas, Motor City, Humanitarian, Insight.com, Micron PC or Music City bowls--just to name a few--in our lives?

It’s not right to be spending so much time debating the prospects of Nevada Las Vegas landing in the Las Vegas Bowl ahead of Air Force in a possible matchup with Syracuse or Mississippi State.

Who outside of Boise, Idaho, and perhaps the teams involved and gamblers, cares about who wins the Humanitarian Bowl between Boise State, the Big West champion and a team from the WAC?

If Cincinnati goes into hostile Pontiac, Mich., and puts a whooping on Marshall, the No. 1 team from the MAC, in the Motor City game, it’s not going to change the landscape around here any.

And are any of us expected to get excited knowing that East Carolina has accepted a bid to play in the galleryfuniture.com bowl? And did you hear? Their most likely opponent is Texas Tech. Ain’t that a hoot!

While we’re at it, why not say Aloha to the Oahu--and to the Aloha, for that matter? Christmas in Hawaii doesn’t seem like it needs football for it to be worthwhile.

And how about axing and prohibiting anything in the future with a dot.com attached to it and disqualifying bowls that take more than one word in the title?

Bowl Season, as we know it, simply needs a tweak--a paring back of the menu--and it can’t come soon enough, although green reality says the chances of this happening are about as good as Notre Dame getting squeezed out of the Bowl Championship Series for integrity’s sake.

As George Harrison sang: “It’s all too much, for me to take . . .”

Go ahead and keep the Bowl Season buffet style, but just stop offering it up as an all-you-can-eat special.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN

Army veteran Richard Haley remembers that afternoon in 1944 like it was yesterday, but it had nothing to do with World War II.

Before Saturday, it had marked the last time the Army-Navy game was held in Baltimore. Haley, 76, was there for both games. Although Memorial Stadium has since been replaced by something called PSINet Stadium, it has done nothing to dull Haley’s memory.

“I walked to it 56 years ago,” said Haley, who served in the Army for 16 years. “We went by ship down the Hudson out to the ocean. We walked from the Port [of Baltimore].”

On Saturday, 4,000 cadets marched from the Inner Harbor through the gates of the stadium, showing that tradition still means something.

HACKETT, TOLEDO UNRANKED

Virginia Tech made a wise investment when it paid Frank Beamer $1.03 million a year to keep him from going to another school, according to a Bloomberg poll of his colleagues.

The 54-year-old Beamer was named the best coach a school could hire to run its football program in a survey of Division I-A college football coaches. Kansas State’s Bill Snyder finished second, and the University of Texas’s Mack Brown finished third.

“Did you ask smart people?” Beamer wondered.

AT WHAT PRICE GLORY?

You’ve probably never heard of Dave Perrigo and chances are you probably never will again.

Unless he happens to be another Christian Okoye in the making.

Still, the Northwestern College of Iowa running back--it’s an NAIA school--found a way to etch his name in the record book in a shameful performance.

Perrigo’s team lost to Northwestern Oklahoma, 42-7, in the semifinals, yet Perrigo still managed to carry the ball 30 times. Funny, because usually when a team gets behind early, it means it must pass its way back into the game.

Not Perrigo’s school, which does seem to use the letter ‘i’ in its spelling of “team.”

Perrigo had a record to break and with his 30-carry, 147-yard performance he became the NAIA single-season rushing leader with 2,504 yards.

But at the price of his team getting blown away and being forced to switch its focus to an individual achievement, the honor rings hollow.

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--Compiled by JIM BARRERO