Less Cuddle More Huddle

No one has asked me to do this, but it's important someone makes the effort. I herewith apologize for all the phucking stupid college football games that have been on television since shortly after the last of the Thanksgiving meal leftovers were consumed. I have been assured by people who know how to read TV Guide and other trade publications that we are nearing the end of this season's broadcast schedule (for the next two hours or so). If there's NO game on the tube right now where you live, go outside and look at nature. Someone will be with you shortly. You're welcome.

If you're under the age of forty it may be difficult to believe this, though it's true, but at one time there were hardly any 'college football bowl games' and point in fact, they all happened on New Year's Day, went off with a factory-like precision one after the other that reminded many of Fleet Week traffic in a Times Square brothel. Now, the list of colleges NOT playing in 'post-season' bowl games is half again as short as the other way round.

I'm not happy with the commercialization of the traditional bowls, the Sugar, the Cotton, the Rose Bowl, et al and the way the sponsor's names are worked into the title. I have no memory of a Fiesta Bowl from back when I was a kid and stuff like the Go Daddy Whatever It's Called Bowl would be better off ignored, except, as Dylan noted, money doesn't talk, it swears.

And now, thanks to the miracle of regional television sports networks, you don't even have to have a winning season to be invited to a money generator like the "Depends Adult Protective Underclothing" Bowl in East Squeegum, Arkansas (you think I jest?), featuring the runners-up of the southwestern division of the Mid-Atlantic and Hyperactive Conference, meeting again for the first time, their traditional rivals from the Dumpster Division of the Southwestern Mid-American and Parts of Rhode Island Association.

My favorite part of many of these telecasts is admiring the creative ways the telecast's technical director and the camera operators develop to NOT show the forty-seven thousand empty seats in a fifty-one thousand seat arena because neither of the teams on the field are located in the same time zone as the facility and their fans are too hungover from end of semester and end of calendar year carousing to walk upright much less travel to the game.

Relentless optimist that I am, and believing in convergence of technologies as I do, we're only years away from being able to stage any athletic contest at whatever level you choose. As an example, the Wabash University Rabid Wombats squaring off against the Vatican Curia Cardinals in competitive mumblety-peg, without any actual human involvement of any kind, on your Wii, Xbox or PlayStation, followed by highlights from NBC's The Biggest Loser.

Perhaps you'd like to see Leonidas take on Patton's Fifteenth Army, two out of three falls on the Plain of Jars in between segments of Project Runway? Brought to you by the folks in your hometown who bottle Coca-Cola! Coming right up! Give us a chance to finish loading the graphics packages and then hit reset, blood. We be jammin' now. Ba na na na...Hey!
-bill kenny