Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Special Rose Bowl Edition

35 Bowl Games? RU kidding me? That's got to be a record. Yep, that's right. Thirty-five bowl games.

First, there's the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl in St. Petersburg where the Southern Miss Golden Eagles (28) will take on the Louisville Cardinals (31). For the birds. Then there's the ever popular Chick-fil-A Bowl from Atlanta, the South Carolina Gamecocks (19) versus the Florida State Seminoles (23). Ho-hum, more birds, this time against some Indians. And of course, no bowl season would be complete without the GoDaddy.Com Bowl , which will be played in Mobile, Alabama. With both opponents unranked, the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders and the Miami (OH) Red Hawks should have fun putting on a show for the devoted football masses in HDTV land.

I must have been asleep at the wheel for the last few years, cause I was blown away when I checked the bowl game schedule on the Internet. In anticipation of watching my Badgers crush TCU on New Year's Day, I was looking for the Rose Bowl start time when I noticed the slew of bowl games that filled the page. I'm not sure when the explosion of bowl games actually took off, maybe they've been adding one or two a year for a while now. Back in the age of reason, it was just the Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the Orange Bowl. Nice and simple. You knew who the teams were because for the most part they were the same, year-in and year-out. Ohio State, USC, Michigan, Notre Dame, UCLA, Boston College, Brigham Young, Alabama, Florida, Penn State. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Anyway, I didn't really mind when they added the Fiesta Bowl, and it didn't bother me all that much when they snuck in the Little Caesars Bowl and the MAACO Bowl too. But when they introduced the Ticket City Bowl, they really outdid themselves. The unranked Northwestern Wildcats against the also unranked Texas Tech Red Raiders, in Dallas. Speaking of which , Texas has 5 bowl games. That's right, five. They've got the Texas Bowl in Houston, the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, the Sun Bowl from El Paso, the Armed Forces Bowl in Dallas, and the Cotton Bowl in Arlington. Wow, that's actually six if you include the Ticket City Bowl ! My bad.

But when all is said and done, the only game I really care about this bowl season is the classic matchup of the BIG 10 against the PAC 10. The Rose Bowl, the big daddy of em' all. Even though it's not for the national title, the Rose Bowl has somehow elevated itself among the best that college football has to offer. And this year will certainly be no exception. My prediction? Wisconsin by two touchdowns. GO BADGERS!