WCCO: Good Question: What’s The Benefit Of Playing Bowl Games?

[BleedGopher]

per WCCO:

Dave Mona was a long time Gopher football broadcaster and, as a consultant to the U, helped hire coach Jerry Kill. He said there are many ways playing in a bowl game can be a big boost for colleges.

“First, there is the money. This bowl pays $4,250,000, of which the university gets about $2 million,” Mona said. “The Big Ten is somewhat unique. The Big Ten pools all of its bowl money. There is about $78 million of money that will be pooled. The university will get about $6.5 million from the cumulative bowls. Even if they were not in a bowl game, they would get $6.5 million.”

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/01/01/good-question-whats-the-benefit-of-playing-bowl-games/

Go Gophers!!

 

[pk2]

I'll continue.

Besides the monetary factors:
- reward for the players' season;
- tangible evidence of a decent/good/great season, depending on the team;
- exposure to recruits;
- happy alumni and/or donors;
- 15 extra practices, which is the same number as they get in spring ball;
- lots of reps in those practices, especially for young players and/or redshirts;
- approximately one month's worth of fodder for message boards.

I'll stop there.

 

[Oregon Gopher]

Especially the last bulleted statement


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Johnob2]

Something that coach Kill said the first time he got us to a Bowl game stuck in my mind - it was along the lines of getting to a Bowl game being so benefitial from a football perspective because of all the extra practice sessions that it allowed for. Although a disappointing loss (take on board all the comments in the other thread about no moral victory) I did feel that Mitch looked more comfortable going through his progressions and the timing/chemistry with receivers (maye in particular) was greatly improved. If this carries over into the spring, I feel that getting to the Bowl game, and the practice time we gained, will have been very important for us.

From a recruiting perspective, it must be hard to quantify, but the fact we were competitive with a SEC division winner for most of the game must raise our prestige/standing with recruits in the South (opposite effect for Iowa?) especially after TCU taught us a bit of a lesson earlier in the season.

For me personally though, I don't feel as strongly about the result of a Bowl Game (might feel differently if it were a BCS bowl) as I do the conference/rivalry games. I wouldn't trade the pig, jug or even the broken chair for the citrus bowl sitting in our trophy cabinet. Even if we had won on New Year's Day those other three games would still have been the highlights of the season for me.