The Big Lead gets it. Bowl games serve ESPN, not college football.

The Big Lead has a very interesting essay on bowl games and their actual worth to universities, which comes on the heels of some excellent legwork on the subject by The Wiz of Odds.

The Big Lead makes several good points. I recommend you click the aforementioned link and read the piece in its entirety, but I'll excerpt a few of its salient points here.

Concocted polls state the players would rather play bowl games. These polls always use weighted hypotheticals such as “would you rather be eliminated in a playoff once in three years or go to a bowl game every three years.” Such polls achieve their desired result. Of course they would choose the latter option. Ask a practical question in December to teams it affects. TCU, Stanford, Wisconsin and Oklahoma players, would you rather play in a closed off BCS Bowl game or compete for a national title? That poll's results would be different.

Proponents argue schools receive high-profile exposure and recruiting benefits, both for football players and prospective students. Perhaps, though it's hard to differentiate those benefits, if they do exist, from the regular season. LSU is LSU because it's in the SEC and nationally televised during the season, not because it played in the Cotton Bowl. Even if one can attribute the intangible benefits specifically to the bowls. Is it worth the massive financial hit?

Those making the decisions for schools, however, do benefit. Coaches and athletic directors receive trips to junkets such as the Fiesta Frolic. They have performance incentives built into their contracts for making bowl games. Most importantly, their jobs are predicated on the football team's success. “Bowl eligibility” provides an attainable benchmark for success.

Good stuff, Big Lead. The piece concludes with perhaps its most-important conclusion, which is that the entity that benefits most from the bowls is ESPN/ABC, which televises 33 of the games.

I know I've been donating a lot of space to this topic in recent weeks. I think it's worthwhile. When certain people and organizations are making piles o' dough off the backs off universities, fans, and the players themselves, something needs fixing.