College Football Bowl Cancelations Should Have Punitive Measures
UCLA on Tuesday canceled their appearance in the Holiday Bowl to face North Carolina State with only five hours notice before the game was to kickoff.
This example was the latest in schools pulling out of bowl games because of either COVID positive tests or lack of depth due to the transfer portal.
While the latest variant of COVID has proven to be less impactful as previous variants the virus itself continues to become endemic in nature and there lies the issue I have with these abrupt cancelations.
The teams who wanted out of bowl games to begin with found COVID to be a convenient excuse to drop out. Teams like Texas A&M, Miami, and UCLA left these bowl games and their bowl opponents high and dry with last minute cancelations because they didn’t want to participate in a bowl game which they felt was beneath them.
It would be a different story if these schools wanted to boycott bowl games until ESPN and the powers at be expand the playoff to 12 or 24 teams, but they aren’t that ambitious and don’t call the shots in their own conferences. Something must be done to punish this kind of deceitful behavior and the only way to make these programs is to hit their pocketbook.
Forfeiting the game in the record books is a given, but giving up any bowl payouts should apply, fines to the program for up to half the bowl payout should be assessed, and postseason bans for the next season should be given to programs which drop out at the last minute.
Are these penalties onerous? Absolutely. Will it keep these type of programs from skipping out on the check next time. You would hope so, but money doesn’t buy class.
Allen Corbin writes for Raiderland and sometimes gets grumpy.
