By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

If you're planning to tune in to the college football bowl lineup on television this season, you might want to begin stocking up on provisions now.

With the potential for a record 28 bowl games, it could be quite a vigil.

The NCAA Division I Management Council yesterday opened the way for expansion — watering down would be a better description — of the already crowded bowl field.

It recommended the existing moratorium on new bowls be lifted and that, under specific circumstances, teams with 6-6 records be eligible for the postseason.

The good news is that the state would likely play host to a bowl game and the University of Hawai'i, with any kind of a season at all, would make a postseason appearance. After being bypassed with a 9-3 record last year, UH could get in with 7-6 this year.

The bad news is that if the recommendations are approved by the Division I Board of Directors April 25, almost every Tech, State and A&M, nearly half of the 117 schools playing Division IA football, could also find themselves in a bowl game.

Considering that 12 teams had 6-5 records — or worse — this past season and crashed the bowl party, that isn't necessarily progress. With 11 bowls already crammed between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 last season, it isn't a good thing.

But it is very much a sign of the times. Once upon a time, a bowl game appearance was a reward and a mark of distinction. Now, it is as exclusive as receiving an envelope from Publisher's Clearinghouse.

Somewhere in the O'ahu telephone directory-sized NCAA Manual there must be listed the inalienable right to the postseason for each mediocre team because every school that finishes the season with a .500 or better record and is untainted by NCAA probation now expects a bowl trip. And, the Division I Board of Directors willing, most will see their holiday wishes granted.

To follow the NCAA logic here, it is helpful to note that of the 25 members of the Division I Management Council, 18 represent the so-called power conferences. And some of them, including the Southeastern and Big 12 conferences, have seven bowl slots each to fill annually — opportunities they would be loathe to see go to an otherwise deserving team from another conference.

As a one-year renewable experiment, and since teams are permitted 12 regular season games (Hawai'i has 13) this year, schools that finish 6-6 would be permitted to go bowling if their conference would not otherwise be able to fill the dance card.

Where this folly will stop is anybody's guess. But where it should end is with a real, honest-to-goodness playoff system. Not the phony, computer-compromised Bowl Championship Series monopoly that has been foisted upon us.

Take the champion from each of the 11 Division IA conferences, the five best at-large or independent teams, seed them and have a four-week, 16-team playoff that could be completed in same time frame as the current bowl structure.

That would give Division IA football two things it might not otherwise have this season: a proven national champion decided on the field and all the 6-6 teams at home, where they belong.