So you say you want to play Bigtime College Football? If you end up in a Bigtime College Football Bowl Game, you had better bring all that you got. Or things will go badly, on national tv.
Witness the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl.
No one will ever confuse me with an expert of college football, but still I generally do okay at bowl game predictions. This year? Yeah, not so much.
Strike 1 = Despite everyone else in the world knowing that USC would be too much for the Fighting Illini, I genuinely believed that Illinois had what it took to not only make the Rose Bowl a very close game, but also win the Rose Bowl game outright.
That didn't quite work out the way that I thought it would. Nevermind all that, believe me when I write that folks here in central Illinois are very proud of everything these young Illini have accomplished. They went from nobodies to somebodies in the span of one season, and I became a fan of this team. I got to watch them defeat Wisconsin in person at Memorial Stadium and then looked on via HDTV as they defeated Ohio State in prime time.
Strike 2 = Continuing my misguided beliefs, I truly thought that Oklahoma deserved a shot at the national title. After all, they had defeated Missouri (twice) and I have much respect for what Mizzou accomplished this season. The loss to Colorado was bad, but the loss to Texas Tech could be explained away - hey, Bradford was hurt.
Didn't matter. Boomer Sooner never really got anything rolling in the Fiesta Bowl, and quite blatantly did not have the emotion to match the passion that West Virginia brought to the game. Not only that, Coach Stoops made some bizarre decisions (i.e. 2 point try and ensuing on-side kick) when the game was still very close.
I'm a fan of Coach Bob Stoops, but even I had to cringe when he panicked in a tight game.
Strike 3 = Any challenge called the "Kiss of Death" challenge seemed like something that I would be very good at. Oh, I had visions of complete triumph in my little mind as I entered my glorious picks over on Oldskewler's blog. Since then I've come to wish that I'd been drinking that night, and could somehow blame alcohol.
No, I was completely sober and I made those picks with all of my college football knowledge clearly in mind. I was using all of my talents of college football predictory and pigskinology.
As things stand at the time of this posting, I'm squarely in last place with a K-o-D Challenge record of 6-15. Of course there is a chance that I could overtake another K-o-D challenger and move out of the rear echilon position, but that would most likely mean that Ohio State wins the Big One.
Basically I'm a simple college football fan, and I just want to see a close and hard-fought game. Please, no more blowouts. But then again, the selfish side of me really wants to get out of last place in the K-o-D Challenge. For that to happen, I need OSU to come up big for me. So in a very selfish and self-serving manner I'm cheering for the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Some of these bowl game matchups should NOT have happened.
1) RoseBowl...we know Illinois only made it in via a BCS contractual agreement. Tear up that bs agreement now. Fans suffered from this fiasco. Mizzou should have been in and Illinois could have been in the Cotton Bowl. Even the Big Ten looks like a bunch of weak clowns for this game.
2) Cotton Bowl...Mizzou slaughtered the now five times beaten Hogs. Ouch. Not much to say here.
3) Sugar...anyone bet on Hawaii in that game? Those clowns didn't play a Top 35 team all year and struggled with overtimes against very bad teams. This was a lock. I watched every HI game on tv and they were usually late into the night. I was never impressed. The system team plays in a weak conference. Still, didn't LSU cancel a game with Hawaii this year?
1) Amen. Let Mizzou try their luck with USC. I'm a severe Trojan hater, but I was completely impressed by USC. They looked scary good.
2) Cotton Bowl? Did we start caring about the Cotton Bowl again? I missed that memo, but anyways I think the Illini would've defeated the Hogs, just for argument's sake.
3) I picked Georgia. That right there should tell you how obvious that outcome was.
4) "Great" is a relative term in this particular bowl season. It was a close game, yes, but simply because the score was close doesn't make it great.
I think everyone is proud of what Illinois has accomplished this year.
OU has fallen apart 4 of the last 5 bowl games. The 55-19 for the NC was the worst but this years loss is right up there. I knew OU would fall apart but I still picked them. I just don't know what happens to OU between the conf championship game and the bowl game.
Hogs (after losing 4 games) did beat LSU.
Last edited by TrojanCupcake on January 5th at 12:30 PM.
I'm a mechanical engineer and sci-fi geek by nature, and I love sports. Once upon a time I played some sports and was pretty good at them, but somewhere along the line I found I could actually make good money in the engineering business. So now I will write about sports and my goofy thoughts about them. Somewhere in these ramblings there might be some value for someone. I'm not sure.
