You wouldn’t hold the Iditarod in Orlando, and you wouldn’t put the Winter Olympics in southern California. But every year, college football teams designed for cold, damp, and even Arctic conditions head off to balmy destinations for postseason bowl games — only to end up looking like sumo wrestlers trying to get the hang of badminton.
If you’re a Big Ten fan, you know who we’re talking about. On New Year’s Day, the Frozen Tundra conference went 0-5, falling to teams from places where shorts and sandals are considered winter wear. The games, of course, were all played in states just this side of the tropics, with a risk of heatstroke, not hypothermia.
Perhaps the most deflating loss came in the Rose Bowl to the Wisconsin Badgers, a formidable collection of heavyweights who prefer to bulldoze opponents flat rather than run circles around them. They couldn’t quite keep up with the fleet Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University.
Isn’t that usually the story from Pasadena? The Big Ten seems to suffer a permanent handicap in bowl games. Going back to 2003, the conference has won a majority of its postseason contests in only one year.
That’s not because schools from the upper Midwest lack talented players or clever coaches. It’s more likely because bowl games force them into strange, adverse conditions — warm temps, blue skies, firm footing. Sunbelt teams are used to this sort of pleasant environment. But Big Ten players really aren’t comfortable unless they’re uncomfortable.
So why not level the playing field by alternating bowl sites from one region to the other? A Rose Bowl at Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium (where the temperature at kickoff time Saturday was 11 degrees) would be a bracing change. Call it the Froze Bowl. Or a Gator — Skater? — Bowl at the “Big House” in Ann Arbor.
If the World Series can be played in Detroit in late October, why are college football players treated like hothouse plants? The NFL will hold the 2014 Super Bowl at New Jersey’s New Meadowlands Stadium, an outdoor venue where a blizzard could hit.
Northerly sites would make for more interesting college football. The most famous NFL title game ever, remember, was the 1967 “Ice Bowl” at Lambeau Field between Green Bay and Dallas, where the temperature was 13 below zero.
It wouldn’t hurt student-athletes from spring break states to see the Great Lakes up close. Not to mention that they’d get the rare opportunity to make snowmen.
And if, come game time, they have to shiver for a few hours? As any Chicagoan can attest, it builds character.
