Bowl Season
December for football fans means one thing: College Bowl Season.
Over a three-week span, fifty-six colleges will send their above-average football programs to such great sites as Las Vegas, Tempe, Miami, Atlanta, and Mobile, Alabama (home of last night's GMAC Bowl), to engage in competition against one another. This makes for some dream matchups, such as the Paterno/Bowden showdown in the Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State's battle against Notre Dame, and the national title game, to be played in Pasadena on January 4th, pitting unbeaten Texas against unbeaten USC.
Of course, it also makes for some downright mockable scenarios. For instance, is anyone at all interested in seeing whether Houston is better than Kansas, or whether Akron can beat Memphis?
Really?
Okay, let's sweeten the pot, make this game something really special...
Let's send those last two teams to DETROIT in December!
What better reward for a year of hard work than a trip to Detroit (never mind that it's a third-world city where a lot of people wear tank tops) to play football on Boxing Day?
How about a few weeks vacation instead?
As for the good guys from Clemson, they'll be in Orlando, where they'll face a Colorado team in a state of complete disarray, after a 30-3 loss to hated Nebraska, a 70-3 shellacking in their conference championship game, and the resignation of their head coach. Needless to say, we're favored, especially after a strong finish to the season, which saw two wins over then-ranked teams, including a whipping of conference champion Florida States. So a reversal of the last trip to this bowl, which saw Texas Tech crush us by 40, would be a nice way to cap the season.
The Tigers will arrive in Orlando tonight, and spend Christmas there, before playing on Tuesday. The two years I worked with the Clemson team, we had to report to our bowl site on Christmas day to unload our equipment truck and prepare for the arrival of the team on the 26th. Both times, I opened presents and headed out the door around noon, but at least i had a little time with my family; doesn't look like this year's team will have that luxury...here's hoping that they're not practicing on Christmas!
That's division I football, the world in which i lived during my college days. As with the rest of the sporting world, there's some great stuff about it, and there's also quite a bit of crap in the atmosphere. I saw both while at Clemson, and it was always particularly magnified during bowl preparation. If any of my fellow managers are reading, they can probably guess what i'm talking about.
Over a three-week span, fifty-six colleges will send their above-average football programs to such great sites as Las Vegas, Tempe, Miami, Atlanta, and Mobile, Alabama (home of last night's GMAC Bowl), to engage in competition against one another. This makes for some dream matchups, such as the Paterno/Bowden showdown in the Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State's battle against Notre Dame, and the national title game, to be played in Pasadena on January 4th, pitting unbeaten Texas against unbeaten USC.
Of course, it also makes for some downright mockable scenarios. For instance, is anyone at all interested in seeing whether Houston is better than Kansas, or whether Akron can beat Memphis?
Really?
Okay, let's sweeten the pot, make this game something really special...
Let's send those last two teams to DETROIT in December!
What better reward for a year of hard work than a trip to Detroit (never mind that it's a third-world city where a lot of people wear tank tops) to play football on Boxing Day?
How about a few weeks vacation instead?
As for the good guys from Clemson, they'll be in Orlando, where they'll face a Colorado team in a state of complete disarray, after a 30-3 loss to hated Nebraska, a 70-3 shellacking in their conference championship game, and the resignation of their head coach. Needless to say, we're favored, especially after a strong finish to the season, which saw two wins over then-ranked teams, including a whipping of conference champion Florida States. So a reversal of the last trip to this bowl, which saw Texas Tech crush us by 40, would be a nice way to cap the season.
The Tigers will arrive in Orlando tonight, and spend Christmas there, before playing on Tuesday. The two years I worked with the Clemson team, we had to report to our bowl site on Christmas day to unload our equipment truck and prepare for the arrival of the team on the 26th. Both times, I opened presents and headed out the door around noon, but at least i had a little time with my family; doesn't look like this year's team will have that luxury...here's hoping that they're not practicing on Christmas!
That's division I football, the world in which i lived during my college days. As with the rest of the sporting world, there's some great stuff about it, and there's also quite a bit of crap in the atmosphere. I saw both while at Clemson, and it was always particularly magnified during bowl preparation. If any of my fellow managers are reading, they can probably guess what i'm talking about.
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