Today was the day of the Holiday Bowl. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is one of the many “bowl” games that are played in collegiate American football. In the professional league, the NFL, there is just one bowl game, the “Super Bowl,” but in college football there are at least thirty of these games.

I think at one time there were several large college football conferences each of which had between eight and twelve teams and, at the end of the football season, the champion of one college conference played the champion of another. At one time, this system was no doubt perfectly fine, but times have changed. We now have a multitude of college football conferences and, as I have already said, at least thirty college bowl games.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cornhuskers play in a conference called the Big 12. They are in this league with several Texas teams plus Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. Naturally, there are twelve teams in the conference.

This season Nebraska, I think, was the number three team, but, despite being only number three, they get to play in a bowl game with another team that did not win their conference. Nebraska won this “Holiday Bowl” 33-0, but the fact remains that there seems to be a bowl game for just about everyone in college football.

I am also not sure if anyone really understands how this system really works. I know I don’t understand it, but once all these bowl game are over, the results are put into a computer and then the teams are ranked 1-25. This does not seem a fair way of deciding a champion.  I think it is time to have a play-off system whereby a true champion can be decided through actually playing and winning. This is what we have in proper football, but, in the world of American football, everything has to be complicated. Where else could you have have a one hour game that takes four hours to play?

Getting back to the Holiday Bowl, Nebraska won the game and get to take home $2.3 million in prize money and a very odd looking trophy. I am told that Nebraska as a football power is on the rise again so we will now just have to wait until next season to see if this is true.