Rye,
It’s not about reward. (“Is this really the type of team that deserves to be “rewarded” with a bowl game?”)
Times are changing. This isn’t the era of ABC, NBC & CBS covering the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Gator and Peach bowls. Cable and Satellite TV are beasts that demand content. Thus we now have bowls I haven’t even heard of that need filling.
Expanding the schedule from 10 games to 12 and a conference title game was about TV and 150,000 extra ticket sales. We ain’t going back to 10 games so we will have some a few less than attractive OOC games each year — just like the less than attractive bowls.
The bowl proliferation is about TV, not about matching 2 teams with no more than 3 losses each. As long as the teams are evenly matched, who cares? Watch or don’t watch. Or come on your favorite board, hold your nose in the air and let people know your standards are high and you ain’t watching two teams with 6-6 records play.
As for me, I’m riding the horse in the direction it’s going. It’s much easier that way.
