Bowl Game Coming to Fenway Park?
Had enough of the college football bowl season? Feel we are over saturated (40 and counting) with bowl games?
Well, hold on folks, there might be more, rather than less, or at least different, choices.
According to sources familiar with the process, ESPN (which is college football's primary bowl network) is discussing the possibility of bringing a bowl game to Fenway Park in Boston.
""It's being talked about,''' said one source with knowledge of the discussions, "but it's just part of wide ranging discussions of what is possible.'''
What is missing is the timeframe--probably following the 2020 season would be the earliest time slot, although a faster pace is possible, but unlikely.
The next question would be which conferences would have tie ins.
The most logical candidates would be the Atlantic Coast Conference (Boston College is a member team), the American Athletic Conference (Conference office located in Providence, R.I) and has northeast teams such as Temple, Navy and UConn or the Mid-American Conference (if it can host a bowl game in Detroit, Boston would be an upgrade).
Any bowl game at Fenway would most likely be a second or third tier game for the participating conferences.
The ACC could also be involved if the people running the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium decide they have had enough of hosting a football game in late December, which could mean a switch of the game between teams from the ACC and Big Ten from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park..
Non-baseball athletic events have become a cottage industry at Fenway. NHL and college hockey games, as well as college football games between Harvard-Yale, Boston College and Notre Dame and UConn and BC, have been staged at Fenway the past years.
Whether this latest venture gets past the talking stage remains to be be seen, but it continues to remain a topic of post season bowl discussion by the television network which controls much of the exposure of college football.