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Longhorns players celebrated their Holiday Bowl win last December, but not making the BCS title game this time around stings. At least Texas will play in a bowl game that most college football fans will want to watch and not one of the unforgettable lower-tier contests.

The sentiment here is that as long as a city wants to host a bowl game, and as long as two schools want to play there, let’s deregulate the entire shebang. You know how you always hear people saying, “You can throw out the records” when a rivalry game is at hand? Well, let’s do the same for bowl games. There’s a reason, after all, that Versus opted to televise Washington (0-10) at Washington State (1-10) nationally on the same day that 11-0 Utah hosted 10-1 BYU on a regional network.

Florida Atlantic is 6-6. As is Colorado State. Would you prefer to see these two in a bowl to watching 4-8 UCLA and its interception-prone quarterback, Kevin “Air” Craft, take on a Fresno State defense that has the fewest picks (4, tied with Miami) in the nation this season? How about watching the nation’s worst scoring offense, that of 4-8 Wyoming (12.67 points per game), face off against the country’s worst scoring defense, the Lean Green of 1-11 North Texas (47.58 points per game)?

To quote Ray Kinsella’s darling daughter, “People will come.”

And if they don’t? Well, have you noticed how many bowl games go untelevised? Exactly. Bowl committees have their own “tarp,” and it’s called the television rights fee. As long as ESPN, CBS, Fox or the NFL Network (!) has committed to broadcast it, then that bowl exists.

In the coming weeks, two teams with fewer than nine wins will face off in a half-empty stadium. As the clock winds down to :00, one side’s players will give their coach a Gatorade shower while their fans extend index fingers skyward. But it’s just an illusion. A road-side carnival. A television show.

Last December, after Texas waxed the Sun Devils, the Holiday Bowl officials were munificent enough to allow Bevo back inside Qualcomm Stadium for some turf time. Bovines do love their pastures, after all. The Longhorn mascot stood solemnly in one end zone and then, after posing for photos, left his mark on the scene.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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