Running Bowl Selection Thread

Ticket sales. Arkansas has never been to a BCS bowl game and the fan base will be jacked up to hit New Orleans. LSU has been there, done that, and their fans might be more energetic about going somewhere else, like the Cotton Bowl.

 

Seriously, where was all the bitching and crying in 1999 when shitty Stanford won the PAC-10 and has its ass handed to them by Wisconsin. Or the following year when a shitty 8-3 Purdue made the Rose Bowl and was hammered by Washington. Or even better yet, how about 5 loss FSU in 2005 making the Orange Bowl. Ohh wait, none of those were Big East teams so who cares. No wonder people believe there's a midwestern and southern bias in college football. It's because there is.

 

If it happened five years ago, those contracts were signed when UCONN was Division 1-aa and Cincinnati was in C-USA, but nice try though. Big East teams havent taken a "payday" game since the current version was formed in 2003.

 

Those leagues have credibility in the bank built up over decades. And, to prove it, both won national championships within two or three years after the exceptions to the rule that you bring up.

The Big East is a basketball conference. When they lost Miami and BC, that was the death knell for football. The onus is on the Big East to prove it belongs, and it hasn't done that. Not consistently enough. No bias there. Just the cold hard truth.

 

This could be a year where many of secondary bowls are better match ups than the BCS.

 

The number of tickets purchased will be a wash. Hell, I'd imagine it's possible that Arkansas fans would buy more tickets to the Sugar Bowl because this is the high point of the program since the Razorbacks left the SWC. For LSU fans, it's "ho-hum, another Sugar Bowl, we'd rather be in the championship game."

Also, LSU fans would likely make a day trip out of the game, while Arkansas fans would be more likely to pump additional revenues into dining out and renting hotel rooms for a few days.

 

The problem for the Big East is they NEVER have a good team anymore. In the three years since WVU's Fiesta Bowl, what is the conference's greatest non-conference win -- Cincinnati winning at Oregon State last year? Big whoop. Those other conferences may have down years. The Big East in the BCS is just an anachronism from when Miami, BC and Va Tech were there.

BTW Stanford didn't get its ass handed to it, unless losing 17-9 -- and trailing 10-9 until the final TD with seven minutes left -- is getting its ass handed to it. Quite a bit different from, say, I don't know, an undefeated team wailing about getting left out of the championship game and then losing 51-24 to a conference runner-up in the Sugar Bowl.

 

Was just about to post that, ucacm. In some ways it's an oversimplification, but true enough to make a difference financially. As I posted before about the past 10 years:

LSU at the Sugar: 2002, 2004, 2007 and (in NOLA at BCS title game) 2008.
LSU at the Cotton: 2003.

Expand it to include the past 50 years and you get this:

LSU at the Sugar: 1960, 1965, 1968, 1985, 1987, 2002, 2004, 2007 and (in NOLA at BCS title game) 2008.
LSU at the Cotton: 1963, 1966, 2003.

Then there's this: LSU opens the 2011 season vs. Oregon at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Going to the Cotton Bowl would be a first for LSU fans at Jerry's big new stadium, and it would be a dress rehearsal (not a dry run, with these being LSU fans) for that game with the Ducks next September.

 

Wisconsin won that Rose Bowl 17-9. An absolute blowout, for sure.

 

Stanford played a shittier schedule than Oregon.

 

A fan on a Michigan State message board found this on the official Sugar Bowl online shop:

 

Stewart Mandel thinks so, too.
And he's got S.Carolina over MSU in Peach Bowl.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/stewart_mandel/12/04/bowl-projections/