Citi Bows out of Rose Bowl - Another Nail in the BCS Coffin?

Hmmmmm...The BCS Bowls are having difficulty "leveraging" the sponsorship of the games...Check this link for the details on Citi bowing out of the Rose Bowl.

How do we interpret this? Well, as a casual observer, I would say that you can't leverage 4 hours of television coverage into a season long commitment of advertising, plain and simple. There are 5 BCS bowl games that have exclusive time slots. That's 20 hours of television time that the BCS and ESPN are trying to use to get the sponsors to pony up additional money during the regular season for additional revenue. Let's not forget that Fed Ex dropped completely out of the Orange Bowl Sponsorship and there has not been a replacement named. Citi has stated that it would still be interested in sponsoring the game, but not the annual commitment that's tied to it.

So, it would seem that the dew has gone off the rose and maybe even the petals are starting to wilt a little on the BCS monopoly of 5 "major" bowls that they control. If we start seeing more sponsorships go the way of the Rose and Orange, which are the two biggest bowls by the way, I can only imagine that Tostito's, Nokia, and All State aren't too far behind. So, where does that leave the ole' BCS as we know it?

Follow the money, my friends. IF the BCS can't generate sponsorship, my guess is there won't be a BCS much longer. And that can only logically lead to a Playoff that people would be tripping over themselves to sponsor. At least, that's the MMQ's guess. Kind of like the NCAA Tournament and the CBS relationship. It's all about the money.

So, maybe, just maybe, if the BCS implodes because everyone realizes that a BCS Bowl is simply another bowl with a bigger payout that nobody wants to watch when it's Boise State and TCU, then maybe we end up with a College Football Playoff.

Stay tuned....Alignment was interesting...This is better!