Today is a glorious day in college football. We have six, count them, SIX, conference championship games (yes, I know, the Big 12 doesn’t have a championship game, but Oklahoma vs Oklahoma State is a de facto conference championship game). Now, under normal circumstances, conference champions are crowned, the college football selection committee does their job, and we would know the lineups for most, if not all, of college football’s bowl games by Monday.
But today could also be a day that could blow the system up. Thanks to Navy, yes that’s right, The United States Naval Academy, there may be nothing normal about this upcoming bowl season. Why may you ask? Well, there’s a very good chance that Navy could be the Group Of Five representative and make the Cotton Bowl if it wins its final two games (AAC Championship against Temple, and their annual duel against Army), which also causes a major delay in the finalizing much of the bowl schedule until Dec. 10.
[embedit snippet=”Nick ads”]
If that were to happen, it would leave some teams – especially five-win teams that could qualify, like Mississippi State – an extremely short window of time to prepare for the handful of bowl games played on Dec. 17, and an even shorter window for the bowl games to get ticket sales up and running from respective schools being invited to said bowl games.
ESPN, which owns many of the smaller bowls, has a bowl selection show scheduled for Sunday afternoon to unveil matchups for the national semifinals and the other major bowl games. But the team looming largest over college football now is not Wisconsin, Penn State, Washington or even Alabama. It turns out to be Navy.
Here’s my point people, college football chaos may be the best thing that can happen. To me, there is zero fun when everything gets all wrapped up in a nice and tidy way. College football — all sports, really — is at its best when there’s chaos. It’s that kind of mayhem that makes March Madness a national treasure.