FOR SALE: Slightly unprestigious New Year’s Eve bowl game in Silicon Valley seeks sexy opponent with at least six wins to face Fresno State in front of 30,000 computer geeks. Must have good references. $550,000.
As if there weren’t enough drawbacks to the Silicon Valley Football Classic, MSU has agreed to buy its way into a postseason berth. To become the opponent for Fresno State, the university has to buy $250,000 in tickets and pay an additional $300,000 in corporate sponsorship fees.
Buying tickets to resell to students, alumni and other fans is nothing new to bowl games - that’s largely how MSU ended up $310,000 in the red for its 1997 Aloha Bowl appearance. But an extra fee for sponsorship, which bowl organizers should be charged with getting, is another sign that the bowl system is losing its prestige in favor of greed.
Unfortunately, the sale of such bowl games has become a more common occurrence this year. The equally, if not less, prestigious Humanitarian Bowl in Boise tried to get UCLA, 7-4, to pay $350,000 for corporate sponsorship and a place in the potato capital of the United States.
UCLA, smartly, refused to pay the price.
Bowl games are supposed to be prestigious places for the nation’s best football teams - not the richest - to show what they’re made of. MSU, along with every other university, could learn a lesson from UCLA.
Unfortunately, it’s not likely any of them will.
Instead, the nation’s finest universities are getting into the business of selling themselves. Once the southern California football team was out of the picture, Clemson, with a 6-5 record, jumped at the opportunity to waste money to play one more football game.
At a time when universities are tightening their belts nationwide, it’s disgusting to see athletic departments throwing away so much money to reward its football teams in overpriced, lackluster bowl games. The prestige and publicity of playing in a bowl game is not worth these kind of costs - it’s sheer stupidity.
There is no prestige - and even less positive publicity - in mediocre bowl games that bankrupt athletic budgets.
Making the situation for MSU even more disturbing is the scramble to find enough money to send the 300-member marching band to California with the football team. The Spartan Marching Band is largely why going to MSU football games is the experience we love.
Just think what that $300,000 could do to help - $1,000 per band member.
And the band, unlike the plethora of bowl games, actually adds excitement to the college football season.
