Five-Pin Bowling

This year, for the first time, the champion of American college football will be decided by a tournament. Okay, it's only three games between the top four out of over 100 teams. But compared to the old Rube Goldberg scheme of polls and formulas, it's a big change. Of course, in Canada, we've had a straightforward tournament deciding our university football champion for years.

That's meant that we've generally had an undisputed winner, but the anachronistic system down south has some advantages. One is what we've seen played out in front of us over the last few weeks: the bowls. A lot of people hate the bowls, or at least, hate the huge number of bowls that mean even mediocre teams get to play in the limelight. But I actually like that. One thing I've complained about in sports is when there's a hegemony of teams that are constantly at the top. I've advocated for changes to level the playing field, but I guess another possibility is to throw a bone to the lesser teams that have at least played the best with the hand they were dealt.

Why not have bowls in Canada? True, we already have much greater parity in Canadian university football, and you occasionally see a Windsor or Waterloo rise from a joke to a contender. But for much of the time, Laval and Western games are as predictable as Alabama or Oregon facing a lesser team. So if, say, York overachieves and has a winning season, why not let them end their season with a moment in the sun by beating Guelph in the Petro Canada Poutine Bowl?

Okay, there is the problem that "bowl" games are named after the Rose Bowl, which is named for the shape of the stadium. But Canadian football stadiums favour seats on the sides, with open ends. So we'll need a new word. Instead of the Maple Syrup Bowl, it'll have to be the Maple Syrup Half-Pipe.

While we're at it, let's also adopt the conference concept. American college teams organize themselves into conferences based on location or ability. There are good and bad aspects to it, but a good thing is that big, athletically-successful schools can compete amongst themselves in the Big 10 or SEC, while lesser schools can compete in Mountain West, or Mid-America Conference.

So let's have the top teams beat up each other in the Big Prairie or East 10 conferences, and give the lesser teams their own space. Maybe some more schools would participate in football if they knew there wasn't a requirement of a yearly execution against Western. Put Waterloo in the Great Lakes East conference with Brock and Trent, and maybe we'd have a chance.