OMG Holy shit we thought we were behind but now we’re totally behind in grand fashion. With apologies to Ian we’re skipping the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl despite the fantastic possibilities offered by its sponsor’s name, since it’s already underway and involves two teams that we honestly don’t care about at all, Minnesota and Virginia, in a city that bores us to gas-huffing death, Nashville. (We grew up there, so we come by the denigration honestly.) Three bowls! Go!

Name: Vitalis Sun Bowl.

Motto: “Vitalis: It’s What Makes Grampa Spiffy!”

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Vitalis. Yes, the same shit Grampa put in his hair. Vitalis is evidently in the middle of a radical rebranding: a visit to the site doesn’t reveal a picture of a nattily dressed, distinguished older man in a cardigan, but instead a multi-paneled portrait of a nearly naked , 16-year-oldwoman (the second wife?) and the Vitalis logo, as if Vitalis were attempting to go from “Early Bird Buffet Ladykiller Hair salve” to “AXE Body Spray for the Dockers Crew.” Good luck with that.

Tradition Rating: 1935–wow. Unprecedented territory for our tradition ratings. What happened in 1935..lessee…Mussolini invades Ethiopia? Maybe good to describe yesterday’s Emerald Bowl, but not useful here…AA is founded? No, but perhaps appropriate for the Alamo Bowl and Michigan fans thereafter….how about the Dust Bowl? A swirling cataclysm of chaos obscuring all sight and engulfing whole fields? Yes, that sounds like the defenses we’ll see here. Therefore we give the Sun Bowl a tradition rating of: Dust Bowl.

A huge, vague mess, just like UCLA and Northwestern’s defenses. Tradition rating: Dust Bowl.

Setup:Big Ten vs. Pac-10. Yum.

Location. El Paso. The only thing we know about El Paso is their stadium whips ass, especially in its digital form on NCAA 2005: striking, cut granite hills and an arid landscape surrounding a well-carved bowl of earth. It already looks like an alien pitfighting temple; if we had to pick one stadium to stage a battle of two enormous war-bots piloted by noble, doomed Earthling prisoners for the enjoyment of bloodthirsty alien hordes, this would be it. This alone makes the Sun Bowl a prime destination.

Matchup quality: Pretty good, unless UCLA seizes and goes into doormat mode as they did against USC and Arizona.

What to watch for: Doormat mode from the Bruins; UCLA is on the whole a much, much improved team, but when it goes bad it gets catastrophic for UCLA. Northwestern is a whole different mess, a typical score-happy Randy Walker team that could win this game by a score of 52-48 or lose it by the same. Entertaining is what it should be, especially if the halftime consists of the aforementioned giant robot duel. We’ll call it a Yuma Swingers party of a game: a 56 on top of a 52 with plenty of scoring.

Name: Independence Bowl

Motto: “No snowstorms–guaranteed! (2000 game exempted)”

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Freedom, dammit. Used to be the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl, but tragedy intervened and left only the vague universal concept of independence as sponsor, robbing CFB of the finest bowl name ever.

Tradition Rating:Rolling the bones in Shreveport since 1975, the year Saigon fell and Pol Pot took over Cambodia. But who wants to reminisce about Southeast Asia–sooo muggy, and absolutely nowhere to watch a decent college football game– when you can fawn over the funniest hair style ever: Warren Beatty in the year’s best movie about a hairdresser, Shampoo. Therefore, the Independence Bowl gets a rating of: Shampoo

Are those women’s jeans? Tradition rating: Shampoo.

Setup: Big 12 versus SEC. Very ’30s retro: the Dust Bowl vs. the REA…

Location. Shreveport, Lousiana. Their web site’s choice of photo seems to want to reinforce this idea: “Shreveport: WE’VE GOT A BRIDGE!” Their motto is “Come play our way on the Red River,” which is code for “gambling, gambling, and one kids’ science museum,” as there are six hotel/casino complexes listed under the “must sees” and one feature listed under “family fun.” Leave the kids at home, we’re guessing, or else turn them loose to panhandle in the streets to make up for your faro losses.

The best part of Shreveport’s site is the film office, which pulls off a tremendous feat here:

The scenic beauty of the area provides an exciting backdrop for any production, and our mild climate allows for year-round shooting. Some of our recent productions include Walker Texas Ranger, True Hollywood Stories, Interview With a Vampire, Universal Soldier, Unsolved Mysteries and a Hal Sutton PGA commercial.

Describing the exact contents of our DVD library in one sentence….eerie coincidence? We think not.

How did they know?

Matchup quality: Decent. We have no idea which Missouri team will show up, or whether Brad Smith will play one of his rampaging 400 yard total/200 passing/200 rushing games, or decide to linger in the pocket and become a Midwestern Reggie Ball for four quarters. If he does, it’s a game, since Spurrier’s outweighing Pinkel on the coaching brain scales by a few hecatons; if he doesn’t, it’ll get ugly fast.

What to watch for: Smith, the ultimate barometer of whether Missouri will play a game or not. Ko Simpson, the best free safety in the SEC, gleefully going helmet to helmet anytime he can and generally wilding through blockers in a blind frenzy. Broadcast shots of the bridge and not much else in terms of local framing by the broadcast crew (bonus points for showing a casino.) Sidney Rice getting the ball short, long, off the bench, on handoffs, express mailed to him at halftime…whatever it takes, he’s getting the ball a lot until it doesn’t work. Jim Donnan’s leaning Missouri, so South Carolina’s our pick, and not just because we sleep with a visor beneath our pillows at night.

Peach Bowl pending…stay tuned.

Speaking of Slate, check out their take on ESPN’s ball washing of USC which has turned Herbie and May into the Super Fans.

Is that Herbstreit or May seen above… we can’t tell.

Terence Moore is one of the best columnists in the world. Today. Because he agrees with us. And we love it when columnists. Do. That.

Apologies for the postmodern columnistspeak–we won’t do it.

Again.

But Terence Moore, whom we usually glance over just before we scan the NASCAR news in the AJC, is right here not only because he agrees with us, but because he cites a number and a historical fact that, prior to Chan Gailey becoming coach, was not true. (Numbers? Facts? Columnist’s daily column? Phone Dan LeBatard and Peter Kerasotis–even bad columnists like Moore can be reformed! We’re in charge of the re-education camps, of course…)

When this one was mercifully over, Tech’s 38-10 beating was its worst in a bowl game in terms of margin of defeat since, well, ever. And the Jackets have played in bowl games since they actually did go to the Rose following the 1929 season. That’s 34 bowls overall, which means you have to wonder if Tech was ready to play against what was an average Utah team that improved to 7-5.

Numbers don’t lie. People do, of course, both to themselves and to their readers. For example: we were once the Minister of Agriculture for Hualien Prefecture, Taiwan: lie. We were once detained by police for over fifteen minutes once for doing donuts behind a parking garage on the edge of campus: true. A fun game to play with your friends, too, especially after a few drinks. (”I’m a registered sex offender in Missouri: true or false?” Uncomfortable silence in bar booth, other people sitting at table futz around with coasters while trying to decide how they’ll answer…)

We were once Agriculture Minister of beautiful Hualien Prefecture, Taiwan. And Chan Gailey is a good coach, too.

Which brings us to yesterday’s Tech game, which we swore we weren’t going to watch in our preview. (more…)

EDSBS–trendsetter!!! In addition to setting the popular trend of starting a scarcely read college football blog, we’re also giving the big boys grist for their mills. Slate gets in on the university commercial analysis in a breezy sketch of university ads. We thank them for finding more links, which we will shamelessly use in future articles. Gracias, muchachos!

Coming off of a loss to unranked Oklahoma, the Oregon Ducks fans will no doubt continue spamming NCAA officials now feeling vindicated that they were screwed by the process that sent them, a 1 loss Pac-10 team, to the Holiday Bowl. Clearly, being matched up with an unranked team that plays defense was just meant to humilate the bizarrely clad Ducks. Had the NCAA rightly evaluated them and sent them to the bowl game their on field achievements merited, they too could have beaten BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl.

We smell splitsville for Glen and Minnesota. Like, Glen is totally spazzing here. We mean, first, pouting and demaning all the attention, and then not returning the AD’s calls and stuff. He is like sooooo totally high maintenance, always preening and looking at other girls, um, universities, complaining about how he “needs his own space” and stuff. We’re bettting Minnesota totally cuts him off of the Beaver train, if you now what we mean.

OMG!!! Glen’s totally breaking up with her.

…to be a member of the 7th Floor Crew? Perhaps he can tell us what the word “mutted/muddied” means.

The Lightning Round Edition of our bowl previews must commence, a hurried twofer since the damn Emerald Bowl starts in thirty goddamn minutes. Autobots, roll out!

Name: The Emerald Bowl

Motto: “Nuts are tasty!” Not really, since there’s no motto.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Emerald, the “snack-nut division of Diamond Foods, Inc.” Boggle at the irony of a nut company sponsoring a bowl game in America’s gayest city and you’ll have one foot in the mental gutter with us.

Tradition Rating: WHOA! Back that thang up, girl, ’cause the Emerald Bowl’s been riding the pole since 2003, the year we spent wayyy too much of our life energy smacking up Georgian mercenaries as badass Sam Fisher, Third Echelon’s finest and most grizzled black ops man in the classic Splinter Cell. We therefore give the Emerald Bowl a tradition rating of: Sam Fisher.

Knockin’ bitches out like the Emerald Bowl: Sam Fisher.

Setup:Georgia Tech versus someone from the WAC. Or at least that’s what it should be as long as Chan Gailey’s coaching there.

Location. San Francisco. Home to America’s most ruthless homeless people and a vibrant gay population. Just the kind of place you want to send a bunch of fresh-faced kids from Utah and the hapless dork populations of Georgia Tech, right? We keep hearing a certain song in our head…You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby…and you’re gonna dieiieeeyaaaaAAAAHHH!!!!

Matchup quality:We’re only going to type this once—who cares. We’re not watching another Tech game as long as Gailey’s coaching, because if we wanted to watch disorganized young men in tight pants trying to put balls in a certain place against other young men with intermittent success, we’ll go down to Blake’s in Midtown, a quality gay bar where the drinks are strong and we’ll be spared the sight of Reggie Ball playing quarterback.

What to watch for: Jump balls to Calvin Johnson. Two interesting defensive schemes that blitz like mad. Some seriously, seriously janked-up offenses. Ratings scraping the “Quite Frankly” level. Evidence for everything you thought sucked about the bowl system. We’re not watching, and neither should you.

Name: The Pacific Life Holiday Bowl

Motto: “The Pac-10 Consolation Bowl”

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Pacific Life, whose commercials show whales leaping in the air. Even money they’ve got overseas investments in Japanese whaling concerns.

Tradition Rating: Getting into the archives now–the Holiday Bowl has been in San Diego since 1978, which is probably why it’s still got enough self-esteem and confidence to keep its maiden name as well as its corporate one. The Holiday Bowl has actually been on a mean-ass run of good nailbiters lately, including the shocking artillery run Texas Tech made on a mopey Cal team last year. Probably one of CFB’s underrated bowl games, which is why we’ll compare it to another underrated classic, the Clint Eastwood classic released in the same year featuring a hero of our childhood, the indefeatigable Clyde the Orangutang. If only modern Hollywood understood the humor of an ape drinking cans of Budweiser in a pickup truck…we give the Holiday Bowl a tradition rating of: Every Which Way But Loose.

Clyde: deserved an Oscar.

Setup:Pac-10 vs. Big 12. Pac-10 team must be disappointed, or at the very least be “slighted,” or “miffed.”

Location. Whale’s Vagina, California. Nice place, we hear.

Matchup quality: Sterling. A disappointed Oregon team with a huge offense rolls in to face a developing Oklahoma team who did nothing but improve following a season-scuttling opening loss to TCU at home. Rhett Bomar’s voice is still cracking but he’s hitting some Steve Perry-like notes on his parts now, and Oregon’s pair of young qbs subbed like Sammy Hagar for David Lee Roth–not quite the same, but well enough. (A reference Bill Simmons might get! Two of ‘em!) Both defenses have tendencies to flub a few quarters worth of action, so yardage will be in surplus. Postponing watching the second DVD of Aqua Teen Hunger Force to watch this: we couldn’t give a better rec here.

What to watch for: Adrian Peterson at something near full speed. The hybrid spread option Oregon OC Gary Crowton cribbed straight from Urban Meyer during Crowton’s BYU tenure. The deliciously named Oregon DT Haloti Ngata, who aggravates our Samoan envy for Polynesian lineman wearing orange and blue. The oddly mustache-less Mike Bellotti, who went 10-1 despite losing a Cadillac of a nose warmer over the off-season. Bob Stoops’ usual crop of no-name defensive talent busting ass all over the field, and likely doing something to win the game against a Cal we mean Oregon team that will come out flat and likely stay flat for most of the game.

And just an hour or so after we typed this about Bobby Bowden…

Sets a deplorable example by refusing to discipline players who commit actual crimes under his watch.

…presto! We get this. Bowden did suspend him and discipline him for even being an alleged rapist and bringing negative attention to the team. This is, however, following a prior DUI arrest and an incident with the Tallahassee cops that ended with A.J. Nicholson getting tasered. (Just made him friskier–allegedly!) Alleged is an important word, here–there’s nothing there yet. But when your starting linebacking corps can boast a domestic assault charge, a DUI, and an allegation of rape, well, that’s who’s representing you out there, FSU alums and fans. Enjoy. *** To See A.J. avoiding the news cameras, click here***

Why is Ernie smiling? Because he could look like a saint compared to his fellow LB A.J. Nicholson./i>

Mark Hasty returns the favor by having us over at the Bemusement Park, where we talk about the Outback Bowl and the proper etiquette governing the interactions in a carjacking.

Iowa…the land of…land. Lots of it, all with stuff on it. We know nothing about Iowa, but rather than make cheap jokes about corn, crystal meth, and how boring the place is, we emailed someone with said cheap jokes and asked him to respond. Mark Hasty, whose fine site The Bemusement Park straddles the dual worlds of both Spandau Ballet and the Iowa Hawkeyes, was downright Midwestern polite in not only answering our questions about the state, but also stuck around for some Outback Bowl preview chatter. We thanked him in a truly Floridian fashion by getting high on angel dust, forcing him at snakepoint to get a mullet, and stealing his car. Enjoy!

Orson: So…uh, Iowa. You’re from there–why? Answer this question for yourself, or for anyone ever born there.

Mark Hasty: We serve a crucial public service, one for which we are severely underappreciated: By keeping Minnesota and Missouri apart, we ensure the Midwest’s two weirdest cultures are not allowed to cross-pollenate. Unless you think a barbecued lutefisk and pig-snoot lefse wrap served with the weakest beer this side of the Taliban is a good idea, that is.

Likewise, we absorb more than our fair share of political absurdity so you don’t have to. The whole flippin’ WORLD owes us some thanks for this. (more…)

Looks like Pete Carroll has pulled a trick out of Spurrier’s old playbook. Carroll has parlayed incredible success and an overt flirtation with a variety of NFL programs into another nice contract extension. No word on how much love USC is showing Carroll with this new deal, but we suspect he’s not taking a back seat to Charlie Weis financially anymore.

EDSBS Hypothesis: The 2005 Michigan Wolverines were both the best and most entertaining 7-5 team in college football history.

Discuss…. and spare the kittens Brian.

Michigan players searching for the flag for illegal participation at the conclusion of the Alamo Bowl.

Name: MasterCard Alamo Bowl

Motto: “America’s fastest growing bowl game.” Which makes it kind of like a successful business, or an aggressive carcinoid tumor. Either way, it’s something to be taken seriously.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: MasterCard, who coincidentally did or will sponsor your early to mid-twenties, too.

Tradition Rating: To show you the antediluvian tree rings of the Alamo Bowl we’d have to tell you that Hayden Fry coached in the first one back in the dark ages of 1993. 1993 was also the year we lost the scarlet V hanging around our neck; not coincidentally, it was also the year Bill Clinton was inaugurated, which touched off an association in our minds between Clinton/sex that took seven years to catch on in the rest of the nation. EDSBS: always a trendsetter! Therefore, we give the Alamo Bowl the tradition rating of: Sexy Bubba.

Tradition rating: Bubba.

Setup: Big 12 vs. Big 10. Can result in thrilling runouts like 31-28 Wisconsin over Colorado; may also result in 66-17 mutilations like the 2000 Nebraska/Northwestern game. Either way, San Antonio gets two conferences with teams known for traveling in numbers and drinking heavily, which can only please the burghers of the city.

Location. San Antonio, a town we know best for arresting Ozzy Osbourne in a green evening gown as he peed on the Alamo. A vibrant, multicultural city that allegedly does a roaring bar business come bowl time, San Antonio has a curious way of presenting itself:

The Riverwalk has multiple personalities—quite park-like in some stretches, while other areas are full of activity with European-style sidewalk cafes, specialty boutiques, art galleries, nightclubs and gleaming high-rise hotels.

We could say the same about certain stretches of downtown Atlanta:

Intown Atlanta has multiple personalities–quaint, run-down ghetto spotted with hip-hop posters and young men grabbing their nuts, interspersed with ruthlessly redone craftsman homes owned by frowning hipsters pretending they’re not yuppies, all mixed in with car washes, wig shops, upscale grocery stores, porn shops, and dog day care business located next to liquor stores and more porn shops festooned with more hip hop posters.

San Antonio–what multiple personalities call home!

The other thing we know about San Antonio is that Cloak and Dagger was set there, so if a dying FBI agent hands you a video game and expires on the pavement in front of you, run lest you be saved by Dabney Coleman in Green Beret gear stolen straight out of Richard Crenna’s First Blood trailer.

Jack Flack always gets away.

Matchup quality: Matthew(dammit!) Jason Bourne-level intriguing. Michigan and Nebraska are both models of boundless potential restrained by some anonymous malaise on both sides of the ball. Nebraska’s defense would shutter one team and then let Kansas roll on them; Michigan would straight smack an opponent one week and go soft-zone wacky the next. Offensively, both teams were even more erratic: the Wolverines watched Chad Henne regress for most of the year, while Husker fans pulled their nails out watching Zac Taylor play pass-0-matic in Bill Callahan’s scheme. Analysts will rely on “whoever makes the fewest mistakes will win the game;” this is code for “I don’t trust either team to fuck a watermelon with someone else’s dick.”
We can’t really blame them for the ole.

What to watch for: For Michigan, the Henne watch will be all-important. With decent run support, he’s the standard white-guy qb from Michigan, throwing the play action and boot to the TE passes with aplomb; without run support, he’s herky-jerky and indecisive and will run the O into punt situations all day. The Michigan defensive lottery will be key, too, since the plague of the cookie-dough-soft zone could feed the Nebraska short passing hearty yardage all day.

None of this may be a concern for Michigan, though, because Bill Callahan remains one of the few coaches who can call a sure thing into a loss in matter of minutes. Running the dink und dunk with a qb who’s right around fifty percent in completions does that to a pass-first coach, and Callahan’s reliance on the weakest part of their offensive scheme in crucial situations has to make the staid farmers of the N-state weep into their popcorn. When it’s good, it’s a great system; when it’s bad, it’s terrible. And when a team is as inconsistent as Nebraska, the good doesn’t stay around nearly long enough in a game to pull out a win.

Name: The MPC Computers Bowl. Damn this bowl for being so close to the MCP Bowl, which could have featured a badass trophy of the villain from Tron.

Motto “Excitement you can feel through nine layers of clothing!”

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: In case you haven’t guessed, MPC Computers, unless MPC Computers just pop out of the ground in Idaho, in which case we apologize for the error. We must give a minor shout-out to the official meat provider of the MPC Computers Bowl, AgriBeef, who has just given us a.) our long-sought after country-rapper handle, or b.) the name of our firstborn son.

AgriBeef, no filler, no frontin’, no scheist
Layin’ on thick with no hormones straight nice
Only hormones you get when Agribeef reigns
Are the whore-moans of your girl when she’s givin’ me brain…

Tradition Rating: You may recognize the blue turf and slightly confused teams from prior games as the Humanitarian Bowl, which boasts an illustrious history extending back to 1997. The bowl sticks out more than others since one of our favorite college monster qbs, Woody Dantzler, ended his formidable career at Clemson by throwing for four tds in the game in snowstorm conditions, a tiny orange dot running hither and thither against a blinding white and blue backdrop in a setting that surreal barely begins to cover. 1997…the year we had our musical hearts stolen by three of the prettiest little girls to ever grace a stage. Therefore, we give the Humanitarian Bowl a tradition rating of: Hanson.

Tradition rating: Hanson.

Setup: ACC vs. WAC.

Location. Boise, which is just begging for a rap scene that will dub it “Boi-Z.” Locals know what they’re up against when they market the bowl, for sure, with even the Exective Director of the bowl copping to the obvious knocks:

‘Well, first of all, it’s not Siberia,” said Gary Beck. ”We actually get only about 20 inches of a snow out here and it’s a dry cold as opposed to a wet cold.”

It’s a dry cold. Always a good starting point. Apparently Boise is quite beautiful–we have yet to see a city site boasting of a city’s “homely, rumpled people” and “bland, soul-obliterating landscape”– though the first thing you see on their city site is the Smurf Turf and a little potato gremlin running across it. Our favorite thing we’ve seen listed is the World Center for Birds of Prey, which makes us reconsider our choice to bring batter-fried mice as an in-game snack. The other logical question stemming from this is asking whether Boise is the world’s capital for “babies snatched from cradle by enormous carnivorous condor,” which would certainly suck as a parent, but would definitely increase the city’s heavy metal rating.

Matchup quality: Bowstaff-skills nice, in this case. Boise State will be in their final game with motivational guru/giant angry fetus Dan Hawkins at the helm, facing a very, very physical Boston College team. Boise’s fun to watch, especially on the aforementioned Smurf Turf, and Tom O’Brien’s moral objection to games with anything but a score of around 24-17 should keep things close.

What to watch for: Whomever is double teaming Mathias Kiwanuka, because they will be sliding backwards rapidly most of the game. Jared Zabransky, who may play a brilliant final game for his mentor, or flake out and throw three picks in fifteen minutes like he did against another very, very physical team, Georgia. (Gang of…) The roving gangs of substitutions Boise shuffles in and out of the game. Fans who dare to be shirtless in the “not-Siberian” weather of Boise. The hellbent, uncoordinated sprinting of the Boise defense. An eventual victory by BC by a score something like 24-17, because that’s what BC’s designed to do against a team just a few notches below them on the talent scale.