http://www.msnbc.com/news/854230.asp The final overtime thriller notwithstanding, I agree with Starr's observations: The marriage of big business and big-time college sports has not been pretty. "To fill 56 spots, any team with a winning season—almost half the teams competing at the 1-A level—get an invite. And it’s painfully obvious that once virtually everyone is invited to the party, it ceases to be special. Does anybody but a few diehard alums and guys with a bad gambling jones actually want to see 7-6 teams like Purdue and Washington play what is essentially a consolation game even if they call it the Sun Bowl? And that’s a step up from Wake Forest, seventh in the ACC, versus Oregon, eighth in the Pac 10, in the Seattle Bowl." btw, he wrote a very nice preview to the World Cup last summer, iirc
bajoro- i'm curious, did you go looking for starr's piece thru msnbc, the newsweek homepage, or was it linked from elsewhere?
If you had asked me that three days ago I might have been able to answer! iirc... I think I saw the link somewhere when I was looking up something about my old school's bowl game (Virginia in the "Chick-fil-A Continental Tire Bowl" in Charlotte") Something about free chicken sandwiches...