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Rendell: Not bowled over by college football's postseason

AS I WATCHED the college football season come to an end in the BCS title game a few weeks ago with Clemson's thrilling victory over Alabama, it occurred to me that I enjoy watching college football almost as much as college basketball. But there is a big difference between these sports that greatly affects my level of interest, and that is how they end their season.

AS I WATCHED the college football season come to an end in the BCS title game a few weeks ago with Clemson's thrilling victory over Alabama, it occurred to me that I enjoy watching college football almost as much as college basketball. But there is a big difference between these sports that greatly affects my level of interest, and that is how they end their season.

College basketball ends in the NCAA Tournament – also known as "March Madness" – which is a glorious three-week "one-and-done" journey to decide who the champion will be. The college basketball season could not end on a higher note.

The college football season, however, ends in a godawful three-week array of 41 bowl games - about as inglorious an end as is imaginable - and with a four-team tournament to decide the champion, in which participants are chosen by some bizarre and impossible to decipher system.

Consider that the college bowl season includes such thrilling games as: the New Mexico Bowl, the Camellia Bowl, the Cure Bowl, the New Orleans Bowl, the Miami Beach Bowl (no, not the Orange Bowl), the Boca Raton Bowl, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl, the Dollar General Bowl, the St. Petersburg Bowl, the Quick Lane Bowl, the Camping World Independence Bowl, the Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl, the Motel 6 Cactus Bowl, the Foster Farms Bowl, the Birmingham Bowl, the Belk Bowl, the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl and the Taxslayer Bowl.

I can just picture some former player telling his grandkids he scored the winning touchdown in the Belk Bowl. What's worse is that in all of these bowl games, 15 teams were chosen to participate despite having gone 6-6 during the regular season, and two actually were selected even though they had 5-7 records.

When I watched college footbll as a kid, you needed a really successful season to be chosen for one of the handful of bowl games. Not so today.

As amazing as it seems, ACC school Boston College was chosen to play in the Quick Lane Bowl despite finishing last in its division. Louisiana-Lafayette was awarded by a spot in New Orleans Bowl although they were ranked fifth in the mighty Sun Belt conference. If you think that's bad, South Alabama was picked to play in the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl despite finishing eighth in the Sun Belt.

And someone please explain to me the difference between the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl and the Military Bowl!

The proliferation of bowl games is nothing short of ridiculous. They are played before half-empty stadiums and seem to have no purpose but to award mediocrity. We need to reduce the number of bowl games to 20 or fewer and extend invitations only to teams who have had successful seasons.

And I've previously made my stance clear on the urgent need to do something about the way we determine the national champion. The selection committee has a difficult job and does its best, but it was obvious this season that it did not select the four best teams in the country or at least the four teams that were playing the best football at the end of the season. Both semifinal games (Alabama vs. Washington and Clemson vs. Ohio State) were boring clunkers. It should be clear to any football fan that neither Ohio State nor Washington could have won against Penn State or USC. As I've said before, the clear solution to this problem is to expand the bowl championship tournament to eight teams. This year, you would have added Penn State, USC, Oklahoma, and either Michigan, Wisconsin or Florida State. To ensure the tournament did not drag out too long (God forbid we take too much study time away from these scholar athletes), we could make the four quarterfinal games and the two semifinal games rotate among the Rose, Cotton, Orange, Sugar, Peach and Fiesta bowls.

These changes are needed almost immediately. We cannot continue to reward mediocrity and play meaningless games at the end of a hard-fought regular season.

Very few Americans will mourn the demise of the Camellia Bowl, Cure Bowl, Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, Popeyes Bahamas Bowl, Motel 6 Cactus Bowl, Dollar General Bowl, Quick Lane Bowl and Camping World Independence Bowl.

Let's find a way to end the college football season with an exclamation point rather than a few thousand dazed fans with glazed over eyes and stultified minds because they watched all 40 bowl games on television. If you are one of these fans (like my driver, Joe Tolstoy), please seek mental health counseling immediately.

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@GovEdRendell