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.

Aspirational peer The House Rock Built has expert analysis on the atrocious Fiesta Bowl trophy. We still prefer the sweet-ass, keepin’-it-real trophy awarded to the Memphis Tigers for their victory over Akron in the Motor City Bowl:

Memphis plans to take their Motor City Bowl Trophy to a McDonald’s in Arkansas, file the vin numbers off, and leave it there.

Despite being a bit down in the chips a month ago, Todd has kept a blistering pace over the past month and pulled to within a paltry 12 films of actually watching a thousand movies in a year.

Stop by 1000 Movies and urge him on. Go Todd Go!

Name: The Insight Bowl

Motto: “College Football Like You’ve Never Seen It!” Despite the unnecessary exclamation mark, they’re right on this one–we’ve never seen Rutgers play in a bowl game before, so touche’, Insightsters.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Insight Enterprises, who dropped the “.com” from their name when the bubble went ploof! and having the suffix instantly decreased your company’s share value by half. The resulting, .com-less bowl name is among college football’s most reflective and philosophical-sounding; watch as blissed-out audience members stroke their beards and thoughtfully pat their body-painted chests after each score tonight.

Tradition rating: Going just one year further than today’s other bowl game, the Insight Bowl roared into the world in 1989 under the moniker of “The Copper Bowl” before adopting its more modern-sounding corporate name. (The move from bowls named after commodities to ones bearing corporate names has to have a anthro-economical thesis waiting somewhere in there, right?) 1989 was memorable for a number of reasons, but none sticks in our brains more so than watching the news on Chrismas Day and seeing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu shot live on television along with his wife. It taught us two valuable lessons: one, if you’re an asshole, people will go as far as killing you live on tv; and two, don’t ever piss off a Romanian.

Tradition rating: Dead Ceausescu.

Setup: Pac-10 vs. Big East

Location: Tempe, Arizona. An underrated college town with easy access to bars. We once crowd-surfed at a reggae show there before being dumped at the feet of a Gigantor-sized biker there, who promptly threw us back up onto the crowd without so much as a grunt of effort. You may be saying: crowd surfing at a reggae show? See, there’s plenty of fun to be had in Tempe.

Matchup quality: 2 Wyckked. The e’er mercurial Arizona State Sun Devils don’t even leave home to face the amped-up Rutgers Scarlet Knights, playing in their first bowl game since the Garden State Bowl in 1978. ASU’s a letdown team with better talent going up against a Rutgers squad that couldn’t be more frickin’ excited about being here, man. Frickin’ awesome.

What to watch for: ASU tossing it all over the place on their home field, loads of hardass running by Rutgers, and playing “Pro/Con” when the cameras pan the stands and the jarring contrasts between the pillow-pale Jersey girls and the bronzed, already weathered looking ladies of the desert. We think the CFN boyz are off their nutter for calling a Rutgers victory, so ASU by 10 in a game that’s closer than it should be.

BOWL PREVIEWS: EXPRESS-O EDITION! Shit, there’s one starting at five o’clock, so let’s roll this fast. Today’s slate starts to get into the good stuff–at least matchup wise–with this pre-New Year’s games picking up a little more in the way of wattage and notoriety. We say this despite the fact that the most entertaining game we’ve watched yet was the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, a nail-biting shootout that ended with a cruel missed PAT downing UCF and Coach of the Year George O’Leary 49-48 to Nevada. And they had many gratuitous shots of hot ass walking down Waikiki, which should be a priority for every bowl broadcast: more hot ass. Basta! Mush, dogs, mush!

Name: Champs Sports Bowl
Motto: “Something’s Got To Give!” Sorry, just kidding there. the Champs Sports bowl has no motto. Well, it did, but Gary Barnett put it in a foot locker along with thirty five grand in unmarked bills and “put it away for safe keeping” in the CU locker room.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Champs Sports, where the nation goes to try on shoes they will later buy off the internet for half-price.

Tradition rating: The Champs Sports Bowl boasts a long history extending all the way back to 1990, when the n00b bowl somehow nabbed Florida State and Penn State for their inaugural matchup. We remember it most for Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison,” which taught our young souls that we should never trust a big butt and a smile. (Oh, but we did, boys, we did. Would that we had listened! Shakes angry fist at sky) Therefore, we give the Champs Sports Bowl a rating of “Bell Biv Devoe.”

Tradition rating: me and the crue used to do her.

Setup: Big 12 vs. ACC

Location: Orlando, which could be a fun place, we guess, if you didn’t mind strollers hitting you in the Achilles’ tendon every three seconds. (We actually wouldn’t be surprised to see that in the IR on gameday. “C. Stuckey, achilles bruise, doubtful.) To be fair, in addition to the well-worn Disney/Universal circuit of tomfoolery (anyone willing to place wagers on one of Colorado’s players re-enacting Bobby Brown’s masterwork of getting arrested at Discovery Pleasure Island, Disney’s “adult entertainment center”?) Orlando’s got loads of bars and cheap hotels set up to keep even the most sun-poisoned vacationer reaching happily for the funnel. The downtown district in particular could leave significant wiggle room for subtle recruiting violations, so keep an eye on the Buffs boosters stuffing Benjamins into the garnishes of bucket-sized Mai-Tais belonging to suspiciously naive-looking young men.

Matchup quality: Poor like Laos. Poor like cracker sandwiches. Brokeass eating sawdust poor. Walker Evans is taking pictures of you poor. Poor. One team finished relatively strong with a victory over its bitter archrival and a bareass humiliation of Florida State. The other lost its last three games by a score of 8370-3, including a loss by three thousand points to Texas in the Big 12 Championship game. (All scores are approximate-ed.) Your head coach is gone, you’ve gotten your ass kicked, and someone just gave you a new Ipod and packed you off to…Orlando, Florida? We quote a more knowledgeable source on performing at all under these conditions:

Former LB Channing Crowder on the 2004 Outback Bowl: “They (Iowa) were playing like they weren’t partying all week. They wanted to prove a point and we were like, ‘Well, forget it. Our season is already a mess.’”

Colorado’s season is mess as mess gets. Clemson will hammer them.

Matchup quality: “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” poor.

What to watch for: One or two jackass trick plays Tommie Bowden will pull in the bowl game. That’s a technical term, by the way, coined when we watched the Peach Bowl a few years ago as Clemson actually ran the “fumblerooskie” on Tennessee for a TD and watched the words “jackass” cross Phil Fulmer’s lips in response. He’s got some good ones, and with an eye for the theatrical should call them appropriately. Also watch as a hell-for-leather tough Joel Klatt suffers with dignity through an unjustly miserable finale to his career at Colorado.

Texas has been given the unenviable task of finding someone to play Reggie Bush on the scout team; fortunately for him, EDSBS is presenting him with our belated Christmas gift of three nominees to help Mack Brown and the boys find just the right sim to play the ungodly fast USC back in practice.

1. Bones Jackson, Mutant League RB. When we saw Reggie for the first time, squirting free on a slant pass out of the slot and blowing through the flailing defense, we instantly thought of the Mutant League’s finest all-purpose threat, the intimitable Bones Jackson. Jackson shared Bush’s speed but also had something Bush doesn’t–an ability to literally slice through defenses, often causing unsightly forfeits in the middle of the third quarter due to mounting casualties. Coach Ace Bricka said he was the finest man to ever run Nasty Audible C, the trademark play of Mutant League Football, and opponents say that they often leapt into pits of open flame or tossed themselves on landmines rather than attempt a tackle on the intimidating back. Pros: Jackson never suffers muscle tears because he doesn’t have any. Cons: may actually dismember important members of your starting eleven in practice.

Bones Jackson: may cause dismemberment.

2. Nightcrawler. The original now you see him, now you don’t threat, Wagner gave ample evidence of his athletic skills playing on the German national team in the ‘66 World Cup before suffering a career ending concussion when George Best clocked him in the head with a bottle of Jameson’s in their epic showdown with England. Pros: Teleporting abilities best approximate Bush’s darting, dodging style, and give defenders a good understanding of what it’s like to try and tackle a mutant. Sulfurous gases left over from multiple teleports may also give defenders a feel for one of Matt Leinart’s less celebrated intangibles. Cons: Teutonic mood swings may result in a sullen scout back tossing the ball away and sulking off the field while digging in his pocket for his dogeared copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther.

BAMF!!! Nightcrawler would give Texas the right idea.

3. The Ghost of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Unrivalled in terms of sheer elusiveness and the best the spirit world could offer in comparison to the flesh and bones specter of Reggie Bush, Old Dirty’s best resume for being the scout back for Bush came in 2000, when the already peripatetic father of 13 (verified) began a month-long end-run around the law. This excerpt from AllMusic’s bio samples the pinnacle of ODB’s escapability:

ODB turned up in a very public fashion at the November record-release party for the new Wu-Tang Clan album, The W (which had been dedicated to him, and featured his vocals on one track, “Conditioner”; other contributions had been deemed too bizarre for release). He took the stage in the Hammerstein Ballroom in front of hundreds of incredulous, wildly cheering fans, and only added to his mystique by managing to leave the facility without getting arrested, despite the large police presence outside.

That’s Reggie-Bush-elusive right there! (Read the whole bio in order to understand the vast reserves of “Ain’tgivafuck” ODB really had inside him. Did you know he was kicked out of a hotel in Germany for sunbathing nude on his balcony? Now you do. You’re welcome, by the way. )

Pros: proven track record of being elusive in tight situations.

Cons: dead.

Elusive, and unfortunately, dead.