The sooner you accept that, the sooner you enjoy the bowl season for what it is: a glorified exhibition where a mythical national champion is then crowned.

Yep that’s about right.

Though I actually voted for Geography.

…how many times has a highly-ranked Pac-10 team been left off the BCS Fail Boat, been relegated to the Holiday Bowl, and then in their despair struggled against a team from the Big 12 and made all the sportswriters cluck about how the Pac-10 isn’t really that good?

The obvious example is that if there were no tie-ins beyond conference champs, Cal almost certainly goes to the Sugar Bowl against Auburn after the ’04 season. I think the Oregon team that went the next year was ranked #6. No matter how nice San Diego is (and it is, no kidding), it makes no sense that a top-10 team can be stuck in the former WAC tie-in bowl while a 4th place Big Ten or SEC team is playing on January 1. (Seriously, South Carolina? Iowa? Are you kidding me?)

Some of those lesser bowls that have crept into New Years Day are a bit of a show, too. I don’t remember the Gator Bowl being a January 1 game, and the Cotton Bowl is still more prestigious in my mind than the Fiesta Bowl…but them, I am a simple redneck, and modern conveniences Bother me.

Personally, I think the go-to move is to blow up the whole thing and go back to how things were in 1990 or so, but apparently there’s no money in it. I think there’d be a lot better matchups if bowls were free to do their own deals…consider the Boise-TCU matchup…

The problem I see with the current tie-ins is the amount of the payouts and the facilities they’re located in.

Geography the Pac-10 can’t change, what we do have are desirable cities to hold games: San Francisco, Los Angelas, San Diego, Las Vegas. What none of them have are modern, football-only stadiums. Both SF & SD are very desirable destinations, yet their football facilities are a joke, oldest in the NFL if I’m not mistaken. Where was Hansen to help facilitate a modern build? What deep pocket sponsor, (Oracle, Boeing, Disney, Intel, Google, Apple, Genetech…) would want to slap their name on a crappy facility?

Second problem is the payouts. The big Florida bowls, Outback, Gator, Capitol One, even Chic-fil-A in Georgia have much bigger payouts than the Holiday Bowl..and those bowls are for lower tier’d teams! Again, nice negotiating there commish. The larger the payouts, the easier it is for university’s to offer attractive travel packages for students and alumni.

I like the Holiday bowl, it generates great ratings, is in a good location, and in my mind marks the beginning of the good bowl games. Nabbing the Big-12 third place team doesn’t bother me because their 3rd place team is better than 25% of their league while our 2nd place team is better than 20% of our league, and I feel that will normally result in a comprable match-up. As for the Big-12 #4 team, I would really like to see this become exclusively the #3 team. I think the prestige (and subsequent payout) of the Holiday bowl will become greater as this match-up develops over time.

The rest of the bowls, I’m indifferent towards. The Sun Bowl has a decent payout but is in a generally cold El Paso, and aired at an inopportune time. The Vegas bowl is too early. The Emerald bowl, I don’t see how it can be sustained if it doesn’t habitually grab either Cal, Stanford, or Ucla. The Hawaii and Pointsettia don’t offer good match-ups.

awesome post…but why are the Rose and Orange Bowls under fever’s “2nd tier bowl” part?

is to make the tie-ins considerably more flexible. It sucks that the Pac-10 has close to zero chance of playing an SEC or Big 10 team outside a BCS bowl not just this season, but for the eternity of the bowl contracts…

I always wondered why the Pac-10 didn’t operate their own bowl, instead of tying into other bowls. With the sponsorship money, ticket sales, advertising, etc. I would imagine the conference would end up with more money, when compared to receiving a million dollar pay-out. Plus, it would excercise more control over its product, creating more compelling match-ups, and whatever else they might want. I realize that the Pac-10 already sort of does this with the Rose Bowl (and its rather successful, I recognize this has more to do with pitting the number 1’s from two major conferences, particularly a cold weather conference with a dedicated fan base), but I think it could be quite beneficial to the conference.

You know what’s the best way to solve all this grousing about bowl tie-ins?

Hint: It rhymes with layoff.

One of the biggest reasons the Florida bowls have stated that they don’t want to negotiate with Pac10 schools is how “poorly the fans travel.” We travel poorly to the poor bowl games, because that’s what they are. My plane ticket to El Paso cost $600 and is now upwards of $1,000— not exactly feasible for 20,000+ fans to do. And El Paso isn’t exactly a tourist destination. I’m willing to be that a New Years Day bowl in Florida would draw plenty of fans from any school: it’d be a nice little vacation.

But the two big Pac10 tie-ins, the Rose and the Holiday Bowls, always get many, MANY fans from whatever Pac10 school is in. And that would be the case here too. Another big issue is the timing of the bowls. A bowl game on December 27 will generally be during the week (this year happens to fall on a Sat), meaning people would have to take off work to travel, generally 3 days or maybe more. A New Years Day bowl would mean less time off work, enabling people to travel better.

And finally, the teams we are playing aren’t exactly top caliber teams either. Miami is what, 7-5, 6-6, from the ACC? Granted, Miami has name-recognition, but generally it might be someone like Maryland, Boston College, NC State. Or how about the Sun Bowl— our 3rd best team is playing somebody from the Big East (not the champion) or a mediocre Big 12 team. When was the last time Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, etc was in the Sun Bowl? I can’t even recall them ever being there. If we were playing better teams, the fans would travel better.

That’s my 2 cents.

Oh, and Twist’s wife is hot