Let's go bowling!

 The college bowl season kicks off today with the Cricket Celebration Bowl in Atlanta and the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl in Montgomery, Ala., and, man, I am stoked. Four hundred thirty-seven bowl games between now and Jan. 4! Every school that horsed around and put up a .500 season, and some that horsed around and didn't, on display in a spangled cavalcade of bowl-y bowl-li-

I'm sorry, what?

OK, OK. So I lied. Turns out there aren't 437 bowl games, even if will seem like it before the cavalcade of bowl-y bowl-iness is over. Actually there are only 42, if you count the Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl and the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl. Which of course I do.

Anyway, it all begins with Jackson State vs. South Carolina State in the Cricket Celebration, and South Alabama vs. Western Michigan in the IS4S Salute to Veterans. The latter is notable because Western is one of seven MAC schools who'll be going bowling this season. This despite the fact even my Ball State Cardinals, who were so lousy they couldn't have gotten into the Three-Day-Old Bowl of Wheaties Bowl if it existed, beat one of the seven -- Buffalo, who'll play Liberty in the Bahamas Bowl on Jan. 4.

Shoot. Old-timers like me still remember the days when the MAC was lucky to get one bowl bid.  And that was to the Tangerine Bowl, which barely counted.

But times have changed, and thank God for it. If they hadn't, we'd never have known how North Texas and Texas State matched up in the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl, or Miami (O.) and Colorado State in (I swear I'm not making this up) the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl. 

Not making up East Carolina-NC State in the Go Bowling Military Bowl, either. Or Arkansas State vs. Bowling Green in the 68 Ventures Bowl ... or Marshall vs. Army in the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl ... or Polynomial State vs. the Franklin Pierce Institute for Removing Stubborn Stains in the Mushy Peas Salute to Horrible British Food Bowl.

OK, OK. So that last one I did make up.

Had you going there for a second, though, didn't I?