FanNation - The Republic of Sport

My thoughts on the whole bowls vs. playoffs debate is a greyish area. The BCS is foolish, and stupid, and unfair; but we're also not going to get a 16-team playoff, and there's issues of complication with all points in between.

What I am sure of is that I don't need to be convinced how terrific college football is while I'm watching the waning days of same and pondering months of cold and darkness without it. Nonetheless, this is what the Football Bowl Association has been throwing at me for more than a week (see video on right of the FBA page, if you haven't seen it already.)

The FBA adverts show spectacular and exciting plays, and then assert how wonderful bowls are. I'm supposed to come to the conclusion that one cannot happen without the other. This alchemy is much like the ethanol industry showing me pictures of cars moving as evidence that mixing corn and (lots) of tax dollars is something other than a tremendous waste of resources.

This reminds me a lot of last season, when the cable companies and the Big Ten Network were feuding, and my cable provider (Comcast) kept running commercials all season to inform me of their side of the story. Instead of sympathy, these adds were providing a ceaseless reminder that if I dumped whiney Comcast and switched to a dish, then my monthly TV bill would finally produce more of the single most important reason to have a TV in the first place -- college football.

The Football Bowl Association is its own worst enemy.

In other bowling news...

Missouri lined up in the neutral zone at least twice (and perhaps three) times in a row during the Alamo Bowl against Northwestern. I lost count. Exactly how does this happen with any regularity whatsoever for any player above the age of 14?

There's a ball and there's a down marker. Look at them. If you have to look backward to see either one, or if the ball looks like it's ahead of the down marker, then you sir are standing in a bad place. If you've had all spring, all season, and then a couple of weeks of bowl practice to work on this concept (to say nothing of however many years before that), then this shouldn't be a problem.

In any case, do not hire Mizzou grads as civil engineers.

Elsewhere in the Big 12, Oklahoma State QB Zac Robinson playing in the Holiday Bowl got demolished on every other down by the Oregon defense and somehow kept getting up and moving his team downfield -- often by running the ball himself. He's surely not yet 40, and after watching this I'm not even sure he's really just a man, either. More like something made of big rubber bands and steel in the labs of Cyberdyne Systems.

Eventually, in the fourth quarter, the hits finally caught up, he started to hobble a little bit and his throws started missing. Oregon finally won this very entertaining game.

But hey, Robinson is a junior. He'll be back.

Finally, to go along with Mike Gundy's "kid who does everything right" rant, watching the Emerald Bowl and the aftermath of its drama regarding the suspended Miami QB, I decided that Randy Shannon's attitude toward his job is making me forget why I used to hate the Hurricanes.