One man's opinion of college bowls

All a college football team has to do to qualify for a bowl game is win six games. It can then be considered “bowl eligible.” That’s because there are so many bowls these days, a team only has to win half of its games, for goodness sakes. It’s no wonder Notre Dame elected to not attend a bowl game this season, because the Fighting Irish were barely a .500 team. Notre Dame was certainly a big disappointment to its fans, who probably would have been embarrassed with any bowl invitation.

With that in mind, here’s my short list of (tongue in cheek) bowls:

The Ex-SWC Bowl – Texas Longhorns (13-0) vs. TCU Horned Frogs (12-0). A perfectly good match-up of undefeated teams which used to play in the old SWC. At least the best team in Texas could win bragging rights and the winner could claim itself the national champion, too.

The Didn’t-You-Used-To-Be-Ranked Bowl – Oklahoma (7-5) vs. Southern Cal (8-4). A match-up of two former national champion contenders, both of which fell on hard times this season.

The Saban Bowl – Alabama (13-0) vs. LSU (9-3). An SEC rematch of the team now coached by Nick Saban trying to with a national championship and the team formerly coached by the same Nick Saban which won a national championship. Will never happen, but we’re just having fun here, anyway.

Northwest Bowl -- Boise State (13-0) vs. Montana (13-0) – These is a match-up of unbeatens who aren’t even in the same division (Montana is in a lower division, the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision), but both are way up in the northwest and in need of proving which is best. Montana just polished off Stephen F. Austin in a game I would have covered if I were still in the newspaper business at Longview (TX).

Possibility Bowl – Cincinnati (12-0) vs. Florida (12-1). This is a match-up of a coach (Brian Kelly) who may be the next Notre Dame coach vs. a coach (Urban Meyer) who didn’t want to be the next Notre Dame coach.