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.