How the Ball State AD Stole Christmas

Merely weeks ago, college football fans—myself included—were up in arms that the athletic director at undefeated MAC power Ball State was refusing to allow his team meet Boise State, also undefeated, in a bowl game citing “prior responsibilities to bowl partners” of the conference. This just became one in a long line of college football postseason (or lack thereof) travesties. The two best teams not to make a BCS bowl to play in a normally meaningless bowl game? This would have made too much sense.

And the college football fans of America were furious. Clearly the business interests of the Ball State athletic department became more important than giving the fans the best game possible.
Fast forward a few weeks. Ball State, amidst all the discussion of missing out on a chance for a mini national championship, didn’t show up to the MAC Championship game and got blown out by Buffalo(?). Turner Gill cried and briefly epitomized the black man’s plight in the South while remarkably being denied the Auburn job in favor of 5-13 Gene Chiznik.

The San Diego County Credit Union Loaded Potato Soup and Crackers Poinsettia Bowl went on smoothly. The game managed to draw TCU, which was probably the second-best team not in a BCS bowl. And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that TCU’s small heart grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of Christmas came through, and TCU found the strength of ten TCUs plus two.

Or was it that Boise State was still feeling the snub and realized that, no matter how much those annoying ESPN commercials tried to convince them otherwise, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl is NOT the game they have looked forward to and played for all year?
The actual truth may be somewhere in between. Either way the fans got to see a good game as TCU squeaked out a 17-16 victory, but it wasn’t the game we wanted. The athletic departments that run the NCAA bought themselves one more year of justifying the bowl system while we can do nothing but wait until March to watch an actually fulfilling postseason.