One of my favorite holiday pastimes is sitting on the couch after polishing off yet another meal and watching college bowl games.

As much as I love college football I must admit that bowl games have gotten out of hand.

I remember fondly spending the week after Christmas watching bowl games with my dad.

All these games led up to the national championship game which, if my memory holds, was actually on New Year’s Day.

Now I have to wait until January 8 to see if Florida can upset Ohio State.

Just for arguments sake I pulled a list of the 2006 bowl games off of ESPN’s website.

If my math is correct there are 32 games in all meaning 64 teams played in the postseason. Four teams (New Mexico, Alabama, Minnesota and Iowa) had losing records.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that all four of these teams lost.

Nine schools finished only one game over .500 on the season.

One of those was Miami, who if I was commissioner would have had to forfeit the season after that debacle they called a game against Florida International.

I remember the days when playing in a bowl game meant something.

It meant you actually had a good season.

How good could your season have been if you played in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl?

(No disrespect to Texas Christian and Northern Illinois for playing in that bowl.)

Glancing over the bowl games is like reading a newspaper add or watching the commercials during the Super Bowl.

The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.

Champs Sports Bowl. Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl.

Papajohns.com Bowl.

The Chick-fil-A Bowl.

Now, I love Chick-fil-A as much as the next poultry eater, but what happened to the Peach Bowl?

At this rate soon there will be a Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald Bowl.

I think all we’d need are the cash and a stadium and we could have ourselves a college bowl game right here.

Maybe Pittsburgh (6-6), Southern Methodist (6-6) or Kent State (6-6) would be willing to make the trip.

NC State and Carolina were available.

Oops, I forgot you can’t have a match-up in a bowl game that happened during the regular season.

There are too many bowl games and too many teams playing in the postseason. It’s no longer about achievement; it’s all about money.

I know that one consideration when who goes where is decided is how many fans that team will bring with them.

I realize that strength of schedule is also factored in but you can’t always rely on the computer.

Boise State proved they deserved to play with the big dogs with their upset of Oklahoma.

Nine SEC teams played in the postseason.

Eight ACC and Big 12 teams played in bowls.

With this many teams playing it lessons the importance of BCS games.

In my bowl world, there would only be 10 games.

Yes, this would decrease the number of teams that play in the postseason, affect the revenue those schools receive, and be a larger number of disappointed fans in the United States.

But, the teams that went to these games would have earned their trip.

South Carolina was 3-5 in conference play but 8-5 overall so off to the AutoZone Liberty bowl they went.

Does that mean that in their last regular season game they threw auto parts at the players (since they throw roses at the team going to the Rose Bowl perhaps this is a tradition to consider starting.)

But I’m not in charge of college football so start rolling up newspapers to throw at the teams that will play in next year’s Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald Bowl.

Heather Odom can be reached at sports@r-cnews.com