Well, the college football regular season has ended and it’s time to move on to bowl season. Undoubtedly, you have read countless articles on how the BCS messed up again and that Michigan got screwed over. Or the opposite, that Florida most deserved to play The Ohio State University in the BCS Championship game.
No, there are far more interesting subplots after the bowl schedule was finalized. Unfortunately, those stories have gone unearthed . until now.
At the end of every season, fans and coaches scream for a playoff. It won’t happen.
Schools and the NCAA make too much money off all of the bowl games, and the argument that all the bowl games could still be held with some being the playoff bracket doesn’t hold water either. Those games lose their implications if they aren’t the national title or the regular matchups.
Some are based on geography, and if that changes, they will lose their luster. It also means fewer teams will go to bowls every year, which means decreased revenue for many schools, and the mid-tier teams won’t stand for that.
Along those lines, the fact that Notre Dame is in a BCS game is entirely monetarily driven, and the product of a terrible rule. The BCS mandates that only 2 schools per conference can be represented in a BCS bowl game. Unfortunately, the Badgers of Wisconsin, the Auburn Tigers and Arkansas Razorbacks are left out of the big-time bowl picture.
Wisconsin is 11-1; Auburn is 10-2 in the best conference in college football; and Arkansas, while 10-3 is the loser of the SEC title game, claims arguably the best player in college football this season, Darren McFadden.
So, instead, Notre Ame (Get it? There is no “D!”) gets the bid despite being embarrassed by Michigan at home, and Southern Cal, which needs a miraculous choke job by Michigan State to escape with a win against the Spartans. Brady Quinn is overrated, and the defensive backs are still chasing Teddy Ginn and Anthony Gonzales from last year’s Fiesta Bowl.
But, the Golden Domers travel well, and will certainly pack New Orleans and be able to watch the Irish get beat worse than I did when my dad heard me use the f-word for the first time.
Secondly, does anyone else see the irony in Boise State making their first-ever trip to a BCS game, while the Miami Hurricanes are relegated to playing in the MPC Computers Bowl on the blue turf in Boise, Idaho?
What a fall from grace for “The U.” They had to fire a coach who won a national title a few years ago, and the guy they wanted to replace him said no so that he could stay at Rutgers. Rutgers?! I never knew that was a better job than Miami; what a sad state of affairs.
Sidenote: Anyone wondering how Butch Davis’ career will turnout at North Carolina need look no further than the state due south.
The Gamecocks have a couple years’ head start on what will happen to the Tar Heels, but the programs will become eerily similar: A dynamic college coach resurrects a football power, while recruiting in the top high school football state in country, deciding to leave for the NFL and absolutely flops on his face, decides to take a few years off and come back to a non-football school in the same conference his old team is in now.
My favorite bowl matchup, however, is undoubtedly BYU vs. Oregon. Now, normally, this game wouldn’t matter much, but take a look at the bowl they are playing in: Pioneer PureVision Las Vegas Bowl (PVLVB). Yes, the geniuses running the PVLVB decided to bring BYU and the Mormons down from Utah to Las Vegas.
That has to be the most ironic bowl setting ever. I think this is like talking the Amish out of Ohio, putting them inside a Best Buy and making them keep their eyes shut and their hands to themselves. I mean, I imagine that Cougar fans will make the trip to support their team, but Las Vegas will surely miss out on all sorts of revenue from the extracurricular activities in which people normally partake when they are in Vegas.
Personally, I think they need to have a “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” ad based on this bowl game. You could have a couple all decked out in BYU gear sitting in their room, watching the highlights from the game.
Then, that catchy little slogan pops up and we are all left wondering. I think I would pay a lot of money to go to this bowl game. I think watching those fans deal with “women of the night” approaching them would be priceless.
Do you think they will walk around with copies of the Book of Mormon and try to convert Oregon fans trying to tailgate or just stand outside casinos and denounce sinners? Maybe my expectations are too high, but I feel like some funny stories will come out of this city-university pairing.
It’s sad that all these great stories are being buried by articles debating whether Michigan or Florida has the right to lose to the Ohio State University Buckeyes by 17 points on Jan. 8, 2007.
