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I didn't consider the remaining games meaningless

Yes, this is my point.

 I hope our coaches and players didn't either.

I can't speak for Venables, but many many many coaches have said they don't care about bowl game results, other than considering the extra practices to be important... for next year's team.

And the increasing number of players choosing to opt out, tells the story on whether or not the players care.  Heck, some are even starting to opt out earlier in the season, if they believe they have NFL potential and their teams are out of contention for conference/national honors.

I know that many fans WANT the team to care deeply about bowl games.  The truth is that enough of them don't, that there's no reason to place any importance on their outcomes.

CFP excepted, of course.

"Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory."

"Courage; Generosity; Fairness; Honor; In these are the true awards of manly sport."

The Golden Goose fable comes to mind.

Mack Brown is on record saying the only important thing about making a bowl game, is getting the extra practice for next year's team.

Tons of coaches feel that way. 

There's a disconnect between fans' objectives, and the coaches' and teams'.  And it's been that way for a long, long time.

Bowl games were created to be rewards, meaningless exhibition games. And they still are.

But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy watching them, or that I don't want my team to win.  Of course I do.  I just don't place much value on the outcomes.

The game of football was meant to be enjoyed.  By the players, and by the fans watching.  It's what happens on each play, inside those white lines, that's supposed to provide the entertainment. In some ways, the bowl games are the last remaining expression of that, simply because they ARE meaningless exhibitions.

That reminds me of the glaring difference in how two of our longtime beisbol coaches viewed the SEC Tournament.  Skip Bertman didn't give two turds about it.  If LSU had won enough games to get to Omaha, particularly with a target seed in mind, he'd use the conference tourney to tinker, or rest guys, or whatever.  OTOH, Paul Mainieri absolutely cared about the SEC Tourney and the team threw everything at it.  

I didn't have a preference one way or the other, except that I like to watch LSU win rather than lose, but it was a very clear difference to note in their give-a-damns.  

Regular-season games aren't even that much fun to attend any more. At least not for 68-year-old me they aren't.
My esposita and I went to the season opener this year. I wanted to attend Brent Venables' first game as OU's HFC.
It was a 2:30 game on a roasting hot--100-degree-plus--day. Someone who at least claimed to know said later that it reached 120 inside the now-completely-bowled-in stadium. People of all ages were being carted out on gurneys.
Which just set the stage for everything else. Non-stop canned music at ear-splitting volume. Exceeding-pain-threshold volume. Simba-Cam. Stupid championship ring races on the jumbotron. Inane announcements and endless recognition of every sponsor and major donor.
Here's what there wasn't: Programs. Updates of other games. Somehow, between the announcements and the video boards and the incredibly phantasmagorical video ring, they couldn't do updates of other games. The opportunity to discuss the previous play, or to speculate on the next play, with the fans around you.
It wasn't fun. I don't care to go back for more.
I have to say that when I went to the Nebraska game in Lincoln a couple of weeks later, it was much better. The announcements were fewer and farther between. There was less canned music. The volume of the PA system was not ear-splitting. My esposita and I could discuss the game with the Nebraska fans around us. The noise was made by human beings cheering their team.
When I posted this comparison on an OU board, I was told that the lack of all the stuff that ruined the day for me at the OU-UTEP game is what has gone wrong with the Husker program.
I am told that recruits love the "awesome" atmosphere at the games with nonstop ear-splitting noise. Maybe so. But it's not for me.

I'm with you on a lot of that stuff.  I only attend 1 or maybe 2 games at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium per year, anymore, for a lot of the same reasons.

You should go and attend a TX-OU game at the Cotton Bowl.  It's like a step back in time to the late 80s or early 90s.  There are still some ads over the loudspeakers and some visual ads inside the stadium, but they're few and far between.  You get a ton more of the bands, and the cheerleaders, and the fans themselves leading stadium yells.  It's refreshing.

There is all of that, and there's also the type of fan it has created.  I've probably mentioned this before, but the last few (rare) appearances I've made at Tiger Stadium in the last 10 years has introduced me to a very different crowd than what I'd always known before.  Bunch of trophy-wife soccer moms playing on their cell phones the entire time, gossiping about their Real Housewife lives and utterly ignoring the game.  They couldn't tell you anything happening on the field and probably don't care.  If you have the audacity to stand up and cheer a bunch of dude-fans I don't recognize yell at you to sit down because you're blocking their view.  

There's a lot to be said about LSU's slow descent into pricing out the average fan (although the new AD seems better about that), but the atmosphere in the stadium centered around crowd-personality is such a key thing that is so very different than what I remember growing up and on through my 20's.  

I love watching the team play in person, but I like to get excited.  I like to stand up and cheer.  I like to leave hoarse.  I don't care for the confrontations that have occurred when people yell at me to sit the **** down and I politely tell them to STFU.  

The first time this happened UTerin03 and her hubby had given me extra tickets they had through his company for the A&M game.  She can attest to grabbing me by the hoodie and jerking me back to my seat when I got hot under the collar about a couple of guys sitting behind us who kept cursing me and yelling at me to sit down.  IMO they should've been standing and cheering for their team putting a massive beatdown on Johnny Football and Mike Evans, but ultimately she was a blessing because I'd definitely have gotten my ass kicked.  Probably.  

yup, all comes from corporate tickets and country club types thinkin it's a social event to be seen at

instead of real fans - cause the real fans can't afford the tickets

put the rich folks and corporate money in the nose bleed sections and endzones, they don't care anyway

let the blue collar fans and students have the inexpensive sections near the field where they can make their voices heard by the opposing team