No Minor Bowls for Those Who Play Them

WASHINGTON -- You laugh. Kevin Harris will smile.

Go ahead, chuckle at the notion of a 34th bowl game, the EagleBank Bowl in Washington. Joke that college football needs another bowl like Joe Paterno needs another candle on his birthday cake, like Navy quarterback Kaipo-Noa needs another syllable, or anybody needs another appearance by David Hasselhoff

Go ahead, indulge your cynicism. It's easy. It's like picking on Matt Millen or the French. No one is going to disagree with you. Even NPR got into the act on the opening day of bowls, mocking the EagleBank Bowl in its own cranky "Get off my lawn, kids" way, should you put any stock in the opinions of an outlet with a higher percentage of 60-pluses in its audience than Oklahoma.

But just for a moment, take your cynicism and bury it deep enough that Indiana Jones couldn't find it.

This isn't the NFL, where cynicism is bred on a Terrell Owens' locker room stool, wearing a blinking red nose or Plaxico Burress turning his sweat pants into the Harper's Ferry arsenal.

This is college football, where teams like Wake Forest and Navy are each alloted 85 scholarships, of which the number that will ever make enough to afford one of Terrell Owens' earrings could comfortably fit in a Volkswagen Beetle with room left over for a Owens and Owens' ego.

So go ahead and make your jokes. But all Wake Forest's Kevin Harris can do is smile.

"It's been an unbelievable experience," said Harris, who started the year off the depth chart only to have his nationally televised moment in whatever sun peaked through the clouds at the EagleBank Bowl. "To see the Capitol and all the monuments was great. We were all excited. To have the chance to hang out together for a few more weeks ... we're a tight-knit group and that was great. But most of all, to be able to help give these seniors a win, because they bailed us out so many times, that was the best part."

Harris couldn't stop smiling. Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo, a granite-jawed man who might make the Washington Monument look like it was made out of Jell-O by comparison, had a hard time stopping his tears.

Why? Because whether you can admit it or not, these minor bowls aren't a blight on college football. They're the best part.


"It's hard to explain," Niumatalolo said as tears welled up. "Unless you worked with these guys, and know that it's so much more than football game... These tears -- I could care less if we lost or won by 70 -- is for seeing these guys take off pads for the last time, not knowing where they'lll be. These are young men who joined the armed services to defend us. I have the utmost respect."

Go ahead, complain that the current bowl system rewards mediocrity. With 68 teams invited, more than half of the Football Bowl Subdivision earns a bid. But after a season where student athletes gave us 12 to 13 games and passed up the easy life of college with the only cost to us the time we spent on the couch watching or the few dollars we tossed for the right to watch in person, is it really so hard to allow them one moment in the spotlight, even if it has to be subject to silly sponsor names like former galleryfurniture.com Bowl or the ev1.net fest? Make fun of the sponsors or the International Bowl which plays on a retro-fitted Canadian football field that leaves slabs of concrete exposed and looks a little like John Daly trying to fit into Paris Hilton's t-shirt. The set-up deserves it and every now and again the marketing behind the games deserve it too.

But don't for a moment take away from the athletes.

You don't have to look any further than the newest bowl, the EagleBank Bowl to see just how much it means to play in a minor bowl, even if you'd rather turn it into a Leno monologue.

Without this game, you'd never see a school like Wake Forest, which has an enrollment roughly the size of Owens' entourage or Travis Henry's illegitimate brood, put an exclamation point on its third straight eight-win season. Without this game, you'd never see Riley Skinner make amends for an awful performance that cost his team dearly earlier in the season and put another chapter in what is a golden age for the tiny Winston-Salem program that was once the kind of punchline even the Lions couldn't imagine being.

Without this game, you'd never see Harris finally have a moment that was all his, after suffering every injury in the medical handbook and seemingly inventing a few of his own, after converting from fullback to tailback and grinding out a win for the players he practiced with every day, but could never quite help on the field.

Without this game, you'd never have Navy senior Rashawn King telling everyone within smiling distance how it felt to score his first touchdown, while, like all Navy players wearing an emblem for various units around the world. ("I felt like Shun White," King joked of his high-scoring teammate for four years at the Academy and another year in prep school, seated next to him). Without this game you'd never have King leaving the locker room with his teammates once again after missing his final Army-Navy game following the sudden death of his father two days before the rivalry. Without this game, King would never have had the chance to repay his coach's kindness with the Midshipmen's biggest play of the game.

"You could see it in coach's eyes, in everybody's eyes," said King, who made it back home for his father's funeral with help from Navy's coaches. "Everybody wanted to send the seniors out with a win and we gave a solid effort.

"Getting that fumble, being able to contribute, that was huge."

Go ahead, tell us the last time an NFL player got weepy after scoring a touchdown in a losing effort. We'll wait.

Without this game, 68 teams would never have one last chance to make a stand together before spreading out into the world like the black-and-gold confetti that floated in the breeze at RFK Stadium after Wake Forest's 29-19 win.

"Just being back with the guys, coming out of the locker room for the last time, that was exciting," King said. "It was a heart-felt moment. "

So go ahead and complain about the bowl system and how it inconveniences you with television you don't have to watch or somehow cheapens your sports landscape. Just forgive us if we have an easier time mustering sympathy for the Big Three CEOs or an IRS auditor than we do for your inconvenience.

You laugh. Niumatololo will still shed a few tears, Rashawn King will never forget his only touchdown and Kevin Harris will smile for the rest of his life.

No amount of cynicism will ever be able to take that away.