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Some Observations on the Bowl Season Thus Far…

Posted by EyesOfTX on January 2nd, 2009 under Football

  • Yesterday officially killed New Year’s Day as the best football-viewing day of the year.  Truth is, it’s been dead since the advent of the BCS – I just figured it out yesterday, probably because this was the least hungover I’ve been on New Year’s day in the last decade or so.  Best game of the day was, uh…well, there was, ummm…ok, there wasn’t a good game yesterday.  I suppose if you had to pick one individual turd from this particular steaming pile of non-contests, it would have to be Nebraska’s game with…who did Nebraska play again?  Hold on while I go Google it….oh, yeah, Clemson!  You know, the ACC team that was so outstanding this year, the coach got run off.  They were rewarded for this stellar year, in which they started off ranked in the Top Ten and finished unranked and coachless, with a spot in a New Year’s Day bowl game.  Presumably, Nebraska earned its New Year’s Day bowl berth by giving Texas Tech a good game before losing.  Yippee.
  • I caught about 20 minutes of the Orange Bowl last night, after finishing my 100th or so viewing of Three Amigos!, and couldn’t help noticing that there were entire sections of the stands covered by tarps.   Thank you, BCS, for utterly destroying what used to annually be the best of the New Year’s bowl games.
  • I actually saw Karl Richins’ crew of officials call a holding penalty on an interior lineman yesterday.  No, really, it happened, I swear – I saw it with my own eyes.  For those who may not have noticed, Richins and his band of merry dipshits did such a great job this season that they got to call the game between Michigan State and Georgia, in the Capital One I Don’t Give a Damn Bowl.  The magic moment came in the middle of the second quarter, when the umpire in this crew actually threw his flag and called Georgia’s center for a holding penalty on a run play.  Richins naturally managed to miss the blatant infraction entirely, but now we do know that this crew is capable of calling and marking off a penalty for holding on an interior lineman.  Just not in a game involving Big 12 teams, apparently.
  • Most distasteful moment of the day – came when the ABC sideline reportress for the Rose Bowl game (sorry, I have no clue what her name is, don’t care, and don’t want to take the time to look it up) made a huge deal of the fact that Penn State Coach Joe Paterno failed to honor the contract with ABC by submitting himself to what would no doubt have been an inane and worthless pre-game interview.  After repeating her tale of this horrific infraction three or four times, the sideline reportress finished by pointing out that “Penn State could be fined up to $10,000 for Coach Paterno’s decision, and he apparently doesn’t care.”  No, really?  Imagine that.  Sheesh.
  • Best bowl game of the year thus far:  without a doubt, it has to be the Poinsetta Bowl, in which a very good TCU team defeated a very good Boise State team 17-16.  This was a game that deserved to be played on New Year’s Day.  Instead, we get a bunch of also-ran games, along with yet another Rose Bowl in which USC humiliates this year’s sacrificial lamb from the Big 10.

Worst.  Bowl.  Season. EVER.

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10 Responses

  1. glenn said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 am

    you get no argument from this corner.

  2. Mockingbird said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 am

    Charlie Weis disagrees.
    BEST Bowl Season EVAR

  3. WhoooTex said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 am

    “Thank you, BCS, for utterly destroying what used to annually be the best of the New Year’s bowl games.”

    You know, it probably wouldn’t be that bad if it had a good Miami or Florida State team representing the ACC each year. Instead they end up sending mediocre FSU teams (2004, 2006) or teams with limited-to-no national interest (Maryland, Wake Forest, and to a lesser degree Virgina Tech). This was their fourth-straight putrid matchup (I didn’t see much interest in watching 10-1 Penn State slop around with a four-loss FSU team even if it did go three OTs).

  4. Eric said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 am

    In retrospect given our effort against Northwestern maybe it was a good thing Mizzou wasn’t showcased in the Gator Bowl, but we got screwed. We blew out Nebraska and I think we would have blown out Clemson. That’s all I could think of watching that game yesterday. I have to think we would have given a better effort had we been playing on New Year’s Day.

  5. Dutchie said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Could Cinci be in competition with last year’s Hawaii team for worst team to play in a BCS bowl game? I truly think so. Thank God that the annual Twilight Zone New Year’s Day marathon hasn’t been butchered the same way the bowl season has. That would leave me with nothing to watch…

  6. hopefulhorn said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 am

    Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports explains it succinctly:

    “The simple explanation is that the BCS is a cartel and the bowls are a costly but important way to block the NCAA’s central office from participating. The NCAA has nothing to do with major college football’s postseason; it doesn’t even officially recognize a champion.

    Adopting a playoff system would be vastly more profitable, but doing so would likely require the NCAA to run the event.

    The conference commissioners would be dealing with a bigger revenue pie and even larger shares for themselves and their conferences. But they’d have to give up the cutting knife.”

  7. Horn in Tyler said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 am

    The Big 10/11 has been the most outspoken proponent of the BCS and has arguably been the criminal mastermind behind what has developed. Although the BCS delivered tOSU its miraculous ref-gifted MNC against Miami in 2003, the real problem with the system has become more apparent the last few years. In almost fitting karmic irony, the BCS system has now lowered the Big 10’s stock drastically due to back-to-back MNC embarassments of tOSU at the hands of SEC teams.

    It’ll be even lower following this season: the Big 10 is 1-5 in bowls so far. Once the war drums start pounding louder and louder for a playoff, you just know that it’ll be Delany and Tressel whining about the need for the BCS system.

    For an acerbic commentary by a disgusted sportswriter, I recommend this:
    http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=jo-rose010109&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

  8. Bob in Houston said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    “The conference commissioners would be dealing with a bigger revenue pie and even larger shares for themselves and their conferences. But they’d have to give up the cutting knife.”

    Do I get points for being ahead of Dan (at least behind srr)?

    The NCAA can’t start a FBS playoff without (IIRC) the approval of the schools in the FBS, of which the BCS conferences form a majority.

    If it somehow happened, the NCAA would risk the loss of said schools, which would kill the golden goose (the D-I basketball tournament) and effectively destroy the NCAA from within.

  9. DBH said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    Yeah, it pretty much sucks to be a college football fan, these days. And tonight, we get the dream matchup of ‘Bama vs. Utah in the Sugar Bowl. I keep thinking the absurdity of this system will eventually be its undoing, but I don’t expect to live long enough to see it.

  10. RansomStoddard said:

    January 2nd, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    My observation is that there are alot of offenses that are more creative and better schemed than the piece of shit that Greg Davis birthed.

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