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New NCAA Rule Sends Toledo to the Potato Bowl

Toledo gets to a bowl after all, but they won't receive any extra benefits.

Kirk Irwin

Indianapolis - Reaffirming that Bowl games should be a reward for successful teams, The NCAA for the first time is sending non-bowl teams to bowl destinations to watch the good teams have fun. 7-5 Toledo was sent to Boise to watch the team they defeated, the 8-4 Buffalo Bulls, enjoy the Bowl experience.

During the Bowling event, Toledo’s athletes performed shoe shines, ball retrieval and took score by hand. Jeff Quinn for one enjoyed the human touch:

"I know they have the electronic scoreboards these days, but that’s like the spread offense, the future, hand scoring is the I-Formation of scoring systems, sometimes it’s nice to do things the way the guys before you did it and that’s why I enjoyed the hand scored bowling."

Quinn would later blame his team’s 241-216 loss on the lack of modern scoreboards.

Toledo then watched as San Diego State and Buffalo enjoyed gifts from the gift suite. The gifts were comprised of items taken from Toledo athletes, each athlete had to give up one of their prized possessions as punishment for not finishing in a bowl game. Khalil Mack enjoyed it:

"I never was able to beat David Fluellen on the field, but I now own his mom’s diamond bracelet, so in a way, I got the W"

An unnamed NCAA administrator stated: I once got a letter from an athlete who had to play on New Years Day every year. No Christmas at home, no New Years Eve parties. He would watch his friends via facebook and see all the fun they were having. I thought, this is supposed to be a reward.

Now we're not going to change the dates because money. We realized the real problem was players saw their friends on lesser teams enjoying the off-season. Under the new rules, the misery of the bowl season is shared by all.

Fortunately, Toledo’s expenses incurred during their week in Boise will be absorbed by the bowl. In exchange, Toledo only has to sell 10,000 tickets to the game, as of Friday, they sold 105 tickets to themselves for the team and have 8,995 tickets still available.

The NCAA administrator was not available for comment on the impact of Toledo’s poor ticket sales, he was busy chastising Bernard Reedy, at the Mash Bash.

"Put that potato down!" he exclaimed, "Potatoes are for closers!"