a billion dollars and a pony

Thank you to all the thoughtful people who emailed or commented to inquire whether I did, in fact, wake one billion dollars richer this morning.  No.  And no adorable little Shetland adorns my doorstep, either.  But I have my THUNDERDOME game, and I'll happily settle for that.

The London era has been sadly lacking in decisive ass-beatings of ACC opponents.  I'd call this the third, following a 31-13 drubbing of 2-7 Maryland in 2011 and a 33-6 pasting of NC State in 2012.  What it hasn't seemed to lack is wins over Miami.  If not being able to beat Duke, UNC, and VT is a major irritant for UVA fans in the London era, not beating UVA must be getting tiresome for Miami fans in the Al Golden days.

Having become more than used to second half collapses in both wins and losses this year, probably the best part of yesterday was the realization that another one wasn't on the way.  Couldn't even pinpoint when that was, but the Hoos kept scoring and Miami kept not scoring, and I'm guessing the Miami fans watching the game gave up on a Miami comeback long before the UVA fans did.  If UVA's red-zone offense was halfway decent - they scored more field goals than TDs once inside the 20, and Ian Frye's longest kick was from a line of scrimmage at the 5 - this would've looked more like the woodshedding that it was.

So the world turns again.  Only college football has the ability to do that in one short game.  48 hours ago it crossed nobody's mind at all to ask which bowl game we might go to, because how silly.  Now I've found myself considering the possibility in all seriousness.  All of which is to say nothing of who will be the coach next year.  Could one simple game change the fortunes of a career?  Or at least, extend its life support another year?  We'll see, I guess.

But, first, Tech.  Thunderdome looms.  Two teams enter, one team leaves bowl eligible.  With the combination of beating hell out of Miami and Tech's spectacularly pathetic display of offense in Winston-Salem, this looks like the most winnable VT game since basically the last time we won it.  What's surprising is how many VT fans have already conceded it.  Their offense has been godawful this year and the idea of Max Valles and Eli Harold getting their cracks at Michael Brewer makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.  Brewer's stats aren't bad, but he sure doesn't pass the eye test, either.  Let the least bad team win a trip to Shreveport.

Bullety things:

-- Canaan Severin's catch: not bad.  And a 14-point swing in the game, too.  You could see the DB get saucer eyes from 700 miles away, and he had his arms all cradled and ready for that football; had it gotten there, he'd have been five yards downfield with a full head of steam before anyone else could put on the brakes to go that way.  I'm convinced it was ten seconds from being 14-3.  Instead it was a 10-7 lead that was 30-7 before Miami found the scoreboard again.

-- Alright, the goose thing was funny, but for my money the real humor was the announcers' inability to speak for laughing so hard.  Flat-out lost it is what they did.

-- I think there were more Miami fans in Scott Stadium than there would've been for a Miami home game.

-- No, I'm not giving out a free pass for 12 men on the field for the punt just because we won.  This is the sort of thing that explains why I don't support keeping London even if we finish this season 7-6.  That shit happens all the damn time.  London could fix that if he wanted to.  He just has to properly incentivize Larry Lewis to do it.  But it's clearly not a priority.  Attention to detail still escapes this coaching staff.

-- Admit it: when you watched the first half clock tick down with no timeout being called, "here we go again" was in your brain in neon flashing lights.  But I suspect that one was more on the refs.  London was visibly livid.  And while you really damn well ought to score a touchdown when you're that close to the end zone, I'll say this: Passing on third down was the right call.  Out of timeouts, a failed run play would've meant going to the locker room empty handed.

-- I've been critical, we've all been critical, of Taquan Mizzell, so credit belongs where credit is due for this one: Mizzell ran really well yesterday.  And Khalek Shepherd did a nice job as the workhorse when Parks went out of the game.  He doesn't have the beef to be a piledriver, but he ran awfully damn hard.

-- Bowl talk in all seriousness: The ACC splits up its bowls into four groups.  The first group is three or four bowls, depending, believe it or not, on whether the Big Ten puts a team into the Orange Bowl.  (If they do, an ACC team goes to the Citrus Bowl.)  We don't have to worry about this.  The second group is called Tier 1, a group of four bowls (ex-Tire, Sun, Pinstripe, and either Music City or ex-Gator) that don't have a pecking order and just have to figure it out amongst themselves who they'll invite.  If UVA wins this Friday, there's a very, very slim chance we could slide into one of those, but it'd be unlikely.

The next group is Tier II: the Military, Independence, and ex-Motor City, in that order.  A 6-6 UVA team would be 97% likely to land in one of these.  East Carolina is the clear fourth team in the AAC, which slots them right to the Military; a very safe bet in the event of a UVA win over Tech is a trip to DC to face ECU.  Next most likely, I think, is actually Detroit; this would probably happen if there's no Citrus (50/50 chance of that), and the top 7 slots get filled with FSU, Clemson, GT, Louisville, ND, Duke, and UNC.  And Pitt loses to Miami and doesn't go bowling.  BC might then be the choice of the Military; their fans are still in close enough proximity and they've had a better season.  Miami would be a natural choice for the Independence.  Detroit would be left with the Hoos.  As you can imagine, I'd be all over this.  I even have tickets already.  Won them at a Lions game.

-- Watching Frank Beamer exult over a missed short field goal that meant he didn't just lose 3-0 to the worst team in the ACC - well, the sadness of that display was immediately evident, so I wasn't surprised to see that picture more or less all over Twitterdom.  You want an image of the sorry state of VT football, that's your thousand words right there.  But in absolute fairness to the Hokies, their fanbase is livid over their 5-6 season and at least 80% of them want Beamer out the door right now - and our fanbase is looking at the same 5-6 record (except with a way worse last four years) and the majority is either supportive or at least accepting of the idea of keeping London around as a reward.  That too is a statement.

Prediction summary:

-- UVA allows at least three sacks.

-- And throws at least two picks.

-- Duke Johnson is held reasonably in check, averaging no more than 5.5 yards a carry.

-- Kaaya throws at least three passes of 30 yards or more.  Precisely zilch of these came true.  Also I picked the game's outcome as badly as possible.

Stats on the season:

20-for-54 on specifics (37%)
6-4 straight up (L)
4-4-1 ATS (L)

game preview: Auburn

Date/Time: Saturday, December 31; 7:30

TV: ESPN

History against the Tigers: 1-1

Last matchup: UVA 19, AU 0; 9/3/98; Auburn

Last game: VT 38, UVA 0; UA 42, AU 14

Line: Auburn by 3

Opposing blogs: Track 'Em Tigers

In 2011, UVA won a national championship in lacrosse, went to the College World Series on the heels of a thrilling ninth-inning comeback, won multiple ACC titles, and placed the basketball team in the top 25.....so what better way to cap off an awesome year than with a prime-time bowl game - the best we've had since, well, the last time we went to the Peach Bowl.  It's a well-deserved reward for a great season.  Auburn and UVA don't share a lot of history, at least on the field; the last and only matchup was a home-and-home series in the late '90s, in which each team won on the other's field.  Perhaps a little-known fact: it was a Virginia grad who founded Auburn's program and gave them their school colors.  (So Auburners ought to be grateful to Allen Potts for his summer excursion to England, or else today they might be looking like Ohio State!)  UVA has a golden chance here to make a huge impression in a prime-time slot; Auburn, as we've seen, is nothing like the Auburn of last year, but that's the kind of thing that filters out of impressions.

-- UVA run offense vs. AU run defense

Top backs:
Perry Jones: 176 carries, 883 yards, 5.0 avg.
Kevin Parks: 141 carries, 661 yards, 4.7 avg.

UVA offense:
165.33 yards/game, 4.26 yards/attempt
54th of 120 (national), 5th of 12 (ACC)

AU defense:
194.75 yards/game, 4.66 yards/attempt
88th of 12 (national), 11th of 12 (SEC)

If there's an area of this matchup that has Auburn fans worried, this is it.  UVA's run game hasn't been as productive lately as it was earlier in the season, but then, the last two games of the year (FSU and VT) were against the best run defenses we've seen all season.  Auburn's run defense is more comparable to Georgia Tech or Maryland, both of whom we rolled.

The Auburn front four is inexperienced; three sophomores and a freshman.  Defensive tackles Jeffrey Whitaker and Gabe Wright each top 310 pounds, so there is cloggability in the middle.  But neither is a dynamic playmaker.  Quite a bit of the runstopping is done by outside 'backer Daren Bates, plus the safeties in run support.  UVA's higly seasoned and cohesive offensive line should at least occasionally be able to blow a few holes in the Auburn line, and I expect a quality performance overall.

I don't think an overly complicated game plan will be necessary here.  I think the old Big Ten plan should work just fine: line 'em up and see if your guys are better than theirs.  I'll bet they are.  Do that and at a minimum, UVA should be able to control the ball and the tempo.  Auburn has pulled out a couple really nice games this year (they shut down South Carolina's Marcus Lattimore) but for every game like that one there are three in which they presented no obstacle.  I don't doubt we'll have a 100-yard rusher in this game, and we should be able to pound out 175 yards in total.

-- UVA pass offense vs. AU pass defense

Quarterback:
Michael Rocco: 196/325, 60.3%; 2,359 yards, 11 TD, 11 INT, 7.26 yds/attempt

Top receivers:
Kris Burd: 60 rec., 810 yards, 1 TD
Perry Jones: 41 rec., 416 yards, 3 TD

UVA offense:
231.5 yards/game, 6.9 yards/attempt
65th of 120 (national), 8th of 12 (ACC)

AU defense:
211.0 yards/game, 7.2 yards/attempt
70th of 120 (national), 11th of 12 (SEC)

The UVA passing game has never been described, exactly, as explosive, but since Rocco took the reins (NOT "reigns") for good, he's produced eight touchdowns against just three interceptions, and has averaged 8.2 yards a throw.  That's a very nice number that, if extended to the whole season, would've put UVA in the top 20 passing offenses in the country.

This game would scare me more if Auburn's best cornerback weren't on the sidelines with a destroyed-up knee.  Without him, the Auburn cornerbacks are green as hell.  That said, though, the safeties are to be accounted for.  Neiko Thorpe is a good playmaker, and Demetruce McNeal isn't bad either.  And the number-one threat when Rocco drops back is the speed-rushing terror, Corey Lemonier.  With 9.5 sacks, he's arguably Auburn's best defensive player.  Oday Aboushi will have his hands full with Lemonier all day.

The first priority, I think, should be to attack the edges and test Auburn's rookie cornerbacks.  They will probably start the game in something close to press coverage on our receivers, trusting their safeties to cover for mistakes.  If the run has been established and the safeties have their eyes on the handoff, throwing deep on play-action could pay off.  I think Kris Burd, the grizzled veteran of the WR corps, will have a big day working on whoever has him as their assignment, catching at least six Rocco passes.  As long as Lemonier doesn't end up setting up camp in the backfield, Rocco should become the seventh passer to complete more than 2/3 of his passes against Auburn.

-- AU run offense vs. UVA run defense

Top backs:
Onterio McCalebb: 102 carries, 532 yards, 5.2 avg.
Tre Mason: 19 carries, 97 yards, 5.1 avg.

AU offense:
174.75 yards/game, 4.26 yards/attempt
54th of 120 (national), 7th of 12 (SEC)

UVA defense:
128.33 yards/game, 3.70 yards/attempt
38th of 120 (national), 4th of 12 (ACC)

Those running backs might look a little thin on stats, but there's no point in including the suspended Michael Dyer.  Without him, Auburn no longer has the bruising workhorse that carried their running game all season.  In his place, there's scatback Onterio McCalebb and relative unknown, lightly-used Tre Mason.

McCalebb can be dangerous; he'll also be returning kicks for Auburn and has taken at least one to the house this year.  He's broken a double-digit run in every game this year, despite never having more than 15 carries and often having just 3 to 5.  On the other hand, his season-long is 21.  Mason - I have no idea.  In limited time, his per-carry average is every bit as good as anyone else Auburn has, but it's not even out of the question that he'll see as many carries in this game as he's had all year combined.

The key matchup here will be our defensive tackles vs. Auburn's excellent freshman center, Reese Dismukes.  Dismukes is the only Tiger O-lineman to start every game at one position.  The defensive line must also be prepared to play entire series without substitution because of Auburn's fast-paced no-huddle.  This is where it will hurt not having Bill Schautz - with him, we had a highly dependable three-man rotation at each of the two D-line positions.

UVA will also have to defend the zone read and other running plays designed for freshman quarterback Kiehl Frazier, who comes in the game primarily to run the ball.  Frazier can scoot.  I'd rather have the ball in his hands than McCalebb's, but not by much.

The ground game is Auburn's best chance at moving the ball, and even though we likely have the trench advantage, I expect Auburn to be able to pick up some yards, in fits and starts at worst.  Auburn's up-tempo offense is something we haven't seen before, and that's probably good for at least a long drive or two.  Since they don't have Dyer to lean on, I think Frazier, McCalebb, and Mason will split the carries pretty evenly, so as to keep the defense off-balance.  Really good run defenses have held Auburn under 100 yards, but we're not LSU - I think they'll top 175 just as we will.

-- AU pass offense vs. UVA pass defense

Quarterback:
Clint Moseley: 65/104, 62.5%; 794 yards, 5 TD, 3 INT; 7.64 yds/attempt

Top receivers:
Emory Blake: 30 rec., 505 yards, 5 TDs
Onterio McCalebb: 30 rec., 291 yards, 1 TD

AU offense:
153.4 yards/game, 6.8 yards/attempt
73rd of 120 (national); 8th of 12 (SEC)

UVA defense:
214.8 yards/game, 6.7 yards/attempt
40th of 120 (national), 2nd of 12 (ACC)

Evidence of the lack of confidence Auburn has in their quarterbacks is the 65-35 split in playcalling, leaning heavily towards the run.  They actually had an even heavier split last year, but that had everything to do with Cam Newton.  Newton's passes and non-Newton runs were much more evenly balanced.

Clint Moseley and Kiehl Frazier will platoon, but it's highly unlikely Frazier will do much throwing.  Gene Chizik says "the whole playbook is open," but that's almost certainly just coachspeak.  Frazier hasn't thrown but 12 times all year, I don't think he's suddenly good for 10-15 passes.

Auburn's receivers might be part of the reason for their lack of desire to pass.  Emory Blake is the only one that has numbers that look like a starting receiver.  Trovon Reed has 21 catches but averages a paltry 7.8 yards a catch.  A lot of the passing game involves McCalebb and/or H-back Philip Lutzenkirchen.  Lutzenkirchen is a red-zone weapon; nearly one-third of his 24 receptions are touchdowns.  McCalebb is also a frequent target; in fact, between the emphasis they give him in the passing game and suddenly being the #1 running back, it's probable he'll have his best game of the season, well outstripping the 119 combined yards he had against Arkansas.

But, you have to like the idea of Chase Minnifield on Blake.  Blake is a good receiver, but Minnifield's covered better this year.  I expect Auburn will try and pick on Demetrious Nicholson, being a true freshman and all, but I don't think they have the weapons to do that consistently.  When it comes to moving the ball through the air, Auburn will have to scheme to get their yardage - getting Lutzenkirchen in mismatches and things like that.  Moseley and Rocco are about even as far as their effectiveness, but Rocco has more weapons to work with.

-- Outlook

Vegas has UVA as three-point underdogs, and that's not even where it started; the money came in and moved the line from an opening of 1.5.  Is this largely on reputation?  Either as a halo effect from last year's championship, or from being in the SEC?  I think so.  UVA has a big advantage in the trenches.  Our offensive line is a veteran group and everyone has started at the same position, every game, all year.  The same for the defensive line.  Auburn's are inexperienced and shuffley.  The Tigers' advantage is in the versatility of their schemes and personnel, but if the UVA lines are dominant enough, it won't matter.  There's a decent chance I'm overrating our talent.  I'm a UVA fan, it's what we do.  But I think I've done my homework enough on Auburn to be able to say: I think we pull off the upset and wrap up 2011 in fine style.

-- Prediction summary

- UVA has a 100-yard rusher.
- UVA runs for over 175 yards.
- So does Auburn.
- Kris Burd has at least six receptions.
- Mike Rocco's completion percentage is over two-thirds.
- Onterio McCalebb leads Auburn in receptions.
- McCalebb has at least 120 combined yards, not counting returns.

Final score: UVA 28, AU 21

-- Rest of the ACC

- Missouri 41, North Carolina 24 (Independence Bowl; not even as close as the score indicated)
- NC State 31, Louisville 24 (Tire Bowl; the Pack made me nervous, because that's not a game we wanted to lose if we want to act like the ACC is a high-major conference.)
- Florida State 18, Notre Dame 14 (Tangerine Bowl; probably the first time in my life I've actively pulled for FSU** - it felt really, really weird.)
- Wake Forest vs. Mississippi State (Music City Bowl; Wake is very likely to get rolled, which means they'll probably win.)
- Georgia Tech vs. Utah (Sun Bowl; I keep forgetting this game is actually happening.)
- Virginia Tech vs. Michigan (Sugar Bowl; this is like another Ohio State game for the Michigan fan in me.)
- Clemson vs. West Virginia (Orange Bowl; let's be honest - this ought to be a blowout for Clemson.)

**I realize Florida State has played VT before, but the fact is my hatred for FSU used to be deep and abiding, and it goes back much further than my hatred for Tech.  So that was always a meteor game.  I still don't like the Noles, exactly, but since they've stopped being the ACC hegemon and Bobby Bowden is no longer the coach, it's begun dissipating to where I can at least root for them for the sake of the ACC.

christmas weekend review

"Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, and gallantly he chickened out...."

You may already know what that picture means - it means we are in for an ACC Roundtable session.  One in which most of our knights followed the lead of brave Sir Robin, so there will only be three responses to round up in this session.  Four if you count me.  (Lesson: never try to get people to do things within about ten days of Christmas.)  Our participants:

BC Interruption
Blogger So Dear (Wake Forest)
Duke Hoop Blog

Only one of them (the BC folks) actually printed their responses, so that means I get to paraphrase the others.  And I'll take a shot at speaking for the other ACC teams, too.  Here are the questions we asked:

1. How did the season go, relative to expectations? For bowl teams, are you ahead or behind the slot you thought you'd be at the beginning of the year? For non-bowl teams, is the season indicative of a trend or simply a bump in the road?

Obviously, UVA wildly exceeded expectations, and I'd wager we're the only team that can say so, outside of maybe Clemson.  Tech going to a better bowl than even they thought they deserved doesn't count.  Just about everyone else in the ACC felt they underachieved, or at best, ended up where they thought they should.  BC Interruption points out that BC's win totals over the past few years have been 11-9-8-7-4, which is a disturbing spiral.

2. It looks as though this will be the first offseason since about 2005 or so in the ACC that sees no head coaching changes. For each of your head coaches, on a scale of -10 to 10 with 10 being "we're building him a statue as soon as he retires, which we hope is never," and -10 being "when they build the space elevator to the moon, we're tossing that loser inside and locking the door," how badly do you want to fire or keep your coach?

People are pretty happy with their coaches.  Caveat: No response from Maryland this time.  The BC guys want to include the athletic director in the space elevator, which is understandable for a guy with way too itchy a trigger finger on Jeff Jagodzinski and not nearly enough of one on Al Skinner.

3. Besides head coach if you're way on the negative side in question 2, what one change do you want to see on your team for next year?

This turned out sort of like a Christmas wish list, so it ended up being an apropos question.  Duke wants to pick a quarterback and stick with him, which kind of sounds like a pretty good idea to me, considering.  Wake wants a killer instinct; also very understandable, with close losses this season that could have swung Wake into the "exceeded expectations so hard" category had they been wins.  BC would like an offensive coordinator.  And as for me, I want what we're already getting: an extra year of experience and confidence.  As the team gets into the swing of things with Mike London and gets some experience under their belts, games like the NC State game - where we mysteriously forget how to do things - will become scarcer and scarcer.

4. How do you feel about eventually going to a nine-game ACC schedule, if the ACC does indeed go that route?

You know my feelings. I'd be all over it.  Other bloggers agree it makes sense, too.  (To some degree, most of us ACC bloggers, whether they answered these questions or not, have in the past reacted to a nine-game schedule in the general range from "it's inevitable so fine" to "it's necessary and proper."  There's little resistance to the idea.)

The amusing part was this: Wake says "great, fewer games against Liberty and The Citadel" and Duke says "great, fewer games against Stanford and Alabama."  Someone's going to be disappointed.  I suspect it'll be the Wake camp, truthfully speaking.  I don't see UVA canceling its instate I-AA games against William & Mary and Richmond and whatnot.

5. Who do you want in your division, when they finally join the league: Pitt or Syracuse?

By a 2-1 vote, the bloggers want Syracuse in the Coastal and Pitt in the Atlantic; also by a 2-1 vote, they prefer to have Syracuse in their own division.  I agree most with BSD's point: Pitt fitting with the Atlantic teams (Maryland, Wake, FSU, Clemson, BC, NC State) "just makes more sense."  As does Syracuse with the Coastal teams, though BC is the dissenter here, wanting to play Syracuse every year.  (That might happen regardless - it's more than plausible that if Syracuse joins our division, the cross-division rivalries, which currently have BC playing VT, would shuffle so that BC plays Cuse and VT plays Pitt.)

6. What was your team's best single play of the season? Which single play would you change the outcome of if you could?

You know my thoughts on the subject.  As for the worst, let's see if we can reverse that 3rd-and-23 conversion by Southern Miss and then see if that game can be won.

BC and Wake picked plays by those they considered their best and most dynamic players; in BC's case, a pick-six by Luke Kuechly (who'd look awfully good in Honolulu blue and silver if he goes to the NFL) against Jacory Harris and Miami, and for Wake, "anything by Chris Givens."  DHB went with a sack against FIU that sealed Duke's only win against a bowl team.

Missed field goals plague the memories of fellow bloggers; BCI wants another try at the one that cost them the Duke game, and DHB wants the ones that lost Duke the Richmond game.  BSD says, pick anything that happened at the end of the Clemson or Syracuse games, continuing a theme of lamenting Wake's inability to close out a win.

**************************************************

OK, I guess it's time to address the two elephants in the room.  Don't worry, they'll be leaving soon; playing time is hard to find for elephants in living rooms.  Merry Christmas, Virginia basketball, Santa brought you coal in the form of two scholarship departures by KT Harrell and James Johnson.

Both of these are surprising and pretty frustrating decisions.  Playing time is cited as the reason.  In Harrell's case, Sammy Zeglinski and Malcolm Brogdon were starting to eat into his minutes.  Harrell's time dwindled from 30+ minutes in each of the first four games to 4 and 7 in the last two, and his shooting this year has been unbelievably bad.  Johnson had not played since the Longwood game and was the last man in the rotation, if he left the bench at all.  Mike Scott and Assane Sene get most of the big-man minutes, with Akil Mitchell third and Darion Atkins starting to worm his way in.

But please don't take that paragraph as a rationalization; losing these two players is a major detriment.  Here again is the list of players getting most of the playing time over Harrell and Johnson: Zeglinski, Brogdon, Scott, Sene, Mitchell.  And what do three of these players have in common?  They're frickin' seniors.  As in, not in the plans next year.  When Billy Baron left, it seemed understandable, as he was the first of six players in the same class to leave.  If you're getting beat out by every one of your classmates, you might be looking at the same thing for the next four years.  Brogdon is a freshman, sure, but not Zeglinski.

My original thought was that losing Harrell would be a much bigger loss, because we've seen what he can do and it's pretty good, when his shot is falling.  Johnson was a much more unknown quantity.  But his decision is more baffling; the guy is so patient with his development that he asks the coaches for a redshirt year, and then eleven games into his first season after taking the redshirt off, he bolts for lack of playing time?  Did he think he'd come out of his redshirt year ready for 20 minutes a game, even with two seniors playing his position?  Next year, Johnson would have been one of the primary options in the frontcourt. 

Harrell could have at least been a vital depth player, but there's at least a prism through which his decision takes on a level of understandability: if he wants to make a career of basketball, or at least make a living for a few years with his skills, his best chance to do so is as a primary scorer for a mid-major team, if he can't be a primary scorer for a high-major one.  But Johnson had as good a chance as anyone on this team to be a starter next year; he, Mitchell, and Atkins were the only returning big men and of the three, Johnson is the only one with the ability to play center.  And none so far have shown a real scoring aptitude.

So we'll have to hope Mitchell and/or Atkins develop one - or that Mike Tobey and Evan Nolte (and Nolte is more of a threeish four than a fiveish four) come in readier for the grind than Johnson did.  Paul Jesperson's redshirt will come off tonight, and I expect he'll get a lot of look tonight and Friday since we're playing two of the worst teams in the nation.  Jesperson is supposed to be a real sharpshooter but his other skills are a mystery right now.  Meanwhile, we're going to be digging out of a scholarship hole for quite a little while.  Right now we have nine guys on scholarship, and ten next year.  In the 2013 recruiting class, which will get filled up hopefully between now and next August or so, there's room for four, but I won't predict they'll all be filled because that would leave room in 2014 for only one other player beside B.J. Stith. 

Other possibilities to answer as time goes on:  Will Brandan Stith commit for 2013 now?  Maybe.  Will Bennett look into transfer options?  Maybe.  With only ten guys on scholarship for next season, it would be ideal to find a graduate student who can play right away next year and fill in some of those depth holes that otherwise we'll be depending on freshmen for.

With now only nine scholarship players, let's hope and pray for good health in the next three or four months.  It would be terrible to see injuries combine with attrition to derail what should be a pretty outstanding season.

**************************************************

Two last things.....

-- One, with spring sports less than 60 days away, it's time for news about them to start moving in; one of those news items is that the SEC baseball tournament is expanding by two teams and one day.  It used to be eight teams like the ACC's; now it will have ten.  Partly this is in response to the upcoming expansion of the conference; the natural question would be, will the ACC follow suit, since we too are expanding?  And I doubt it.  The difference between the SEC and ACC is that the ACC's bottom teams are off a cliff.  You can't make any kind of a good case for including a 9th and 10th team when those teams last year were 11-19 and 7-22 in conference play.  Besides, the SEC is adding two baseball teams; we are adding just one (Syracuse has no team), and whereas Texas A&M will strengthen SEC baseball, Pitt will weaken our conference.  So don't expect to see the ACC baseball tournament expand.  It'd be awfully hard on the pitching arms, anyway.

-- Now for a rant against terrible, terrible journalism.  There is an article making the rounds that Clemson will lose $185,000 on their Orange Bowl trip.  That's fine and dandy, but in their breakdown of revenues and expenses incurred by Clemson on this trip, the article neglects to mention the following facts:

- The ACC will distribute more than just Orange Bowl money.
- The ACC pays expenses for bowl teams, from the combined bowl money pot, over and above a team's slice of the bowl pie.
- The ACC picks up the tab for unsold seats as long as the school reaches 8,000.
- Which Clemson has.

How it works is like this: The ACC collects all the bowl payout money, which this year adds up to a little over $40 million.  It then uses that money to 1) give to bowl-bound teams to cover their expenses and 2) absorb unsold tickets for the schools if they fail to reach their quota but exceed 8,000.  Whatever's left over is split 12 ways and handed to the schools.

BCS teams get - hey - $1.7 million for their expenses.  Which is awfully similar to the $1.75 million cited by the article.  Putting two and two together we come to the conclusion that the article-writer completely failed to mention the rest of the money that Clemson gets.  It's obvious what happened: he assumed the ACC expense allowance was the only bowl money there was, and ignored everything else.  A little simple math uncovers the deception: he even writes -

What about the $18 million payout the bowl game guarantees the participants? That money goes to the ACC and is equally distributed to member institutions.

OK, so it's equally distributed - so $1.75 million times 12 is $21 million - so that means that $3 million total came from the seven other bowls?

At best this is slipshod bullshit.  At worst, if I may be allowed to climb the grassy knoll for a second, the writer knows and doesn't care because he's trying to present the bowls as an evil corporate racket that stands between you and your precious playoff, you poor innocent exploited football fan that only wants a nice bracket like in basketball and are prevented from having such by assholes in suits.  I would say that we are reaching - or have reached - the point where us bloggers are doing journalism better than the journalists, except that's kind of insulting to the fans who don't blog because I'm just a guy with opinions, same as anyone.  Here's a thread from your basic everyday message board that does it better than the journalists, for petesake.  I think the math is a little off, but not much - I calculate that each ACC team will pocket roughly $2.3 million from just the bowl season.  Not a bad bit of change.

Oh, and hell - even if it was true that Clemson ended up paying out $185,000 to go to the Orange Bowl, how is that even a bad deal?  Teams routinely pay more than twice that for fluffy pancake games like Idaho and Toledo and William & Mary and whatnot.  Are you telling me, Mr. Terrible Journalist, that I have to pay $400,000 to bring Idaho into town but only $185,000 to go to the Orange Bowl?  Where do I sign up to get exploited like that?

the FOV guide to the bowl names

Well, I had plans for today's post, but they've been put on hold for now.  So I started drinking scotch while watching the Poinsettia Bowl and this is the result.  It's occurred to me that I use a lot of alternate bowl names when I'm referring to them that might not always make sense.  This is because I refuse to recognize that any such thing as the "Capital One Bowl" exists.  90% of corporate names on bowls fall into one of two categories:

-- Replaced a perfectly good, worthwhile name (Chick-Fil-A Bowl, Insight Bowl, etc.)
-- Stupid-sounding name applied to a terrible bowl (Beef O' Brady's Bowl, Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl)

(You'll notice I'm actually using the names.  For now.  Don't get used to it, it's just for reference sake.)

So here is the From Old Virginia guide to what the bowl names should be.  First off, I don't care if someone decides to put their name in front of a regular one.  Fine, do it; I don't have to worry about it.  Those are never getting said anyway except by the people who are required to.  So, here are the names I actually like:

- Alamo Bowl
- Cotton Bowl
- Fiesta Bowl
- Gator Bowl
- Holiday Bowl
- Independence Bowl
- Las Vegas Bowl
- Liberty Bowl
- Music City Bowl
- Orange Bowl
- Poinsettia Bowl
- Rose Bowl
- Sugar Bowl
- Sun Bowl

So those are cool.  A good name plays on a local feature (Sun, Orange), or uses the holidays (Poinsettia, Holiday), or otherwise rolls off the tongue nicely.  Then there are some other names I'm not philosophically opposed to, but I don't care for the sound of:

- New Mexico Bowl
- Hawaii Bowl
- New Orleans Bowl

I think it's lazy to just use the name of your place as the bowl's name.  There used to be other offenders here - the Texas Bowl, the Mobile Alabama Bowl, the Seattle Bowl, to name a few.  Fort Worth Bowl.  It's boring.  (Las Vegas Bowl is the exception, because the name "Las Vegas" alone conjures up enough of an image to make it work.)  There's got to be something more creative than "New Orleans Bowl."  For these, I suggest Trinity Bowl, Aloha Bowl, and Bourbon Bowl (like in The Waterboy) - all have local connections which shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  And for different and semi-obvious reasons, none will ever be used.  Oh well.  I'll stick with the real names on these.

Then there's:

- Pinstripe Bowl
- Armed Forces Bowl
- Military Bowl

They just don't have that right sound.  But again, not philosophically opposed to the names, so I figure, might as well use 'em.  Big Apple Bowl would sound cool, though.

Now we get to the ones I am philosophically opposed to, and won't likely use.  Here's the part that might actually be helpful.  Some of the names, I actually don't really hate:

- Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Tell you what, let's just compromise and agree to call this the Potato Bowl.  It jibes with the idea of using local produce as the bowl name, and it's really not that different from the Citrus Bowl, which became that when the Florida Citrus Growers Association attached its sponsorship.  It sounds a little silly, but it can't be helped that potatoes aren't the awesomest things in history.  It sure sounds better than its old name, the Humanitarian Bowl.

Suggested name: Potato Bowl
Name I'll use: Potato Bowl

- Outback Bowl

This used to be the Hall of Fame Bowl, and it still doesn't sound completely horrible.  A select few of these corporate names don't.  I might slip and use it since it sort of rolls, and it's one of the older names that people are getting used to.

Suggested name: Hall of Fame Bowl
Name I'll use: sometimes Outback, sometimes Hall of Fame

Now we get into the names that are completely stupid.  Like, boycott-the-companies-til-they-take-their-name-off-our-traditions stupid.

- Beef O' Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg

OK, in some cases "traditions" might be a stretch.  I watched this last night and it was the worst football game in history.  Oh, and all the ads for Beef O' Brady's made the food look really unappetizing.  The food is supposed to look unrealistically good in the ads, not overcooked.  This is one of the newest bowls and it's played in a place that doesn't have a single distinguishing characteristic.  So I'm sort of at a loss.

Suggested name: Anything else at all
Name I'll use: St. Pete Bowl

- Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl

Mike Ilitch - the owner of Little Caesar's - has done a zillion great things in my home city, but I'm still not using his company's name on the bowl.  This was the Motor City Bowl and it ought to have stayed that way.

Suggested name: Motor City Bowl
Name I'll use: Motor City Bowl or Pizza Bowl

- Belk Bowl

Weirdly, I never hated the name "Continental Tire Bowl."  It does kind of have that roll to it and it's easy to shorten.  The bowl organizers called it the "Queen City Bowl" while they waited for a suitable sponsor, which also sounds just fine to me.

Suggested name: Queen City Bowl or Carolina Bowl
Name I'll use: Tire Bowl

- Champs Sports Bowl

This poor bowl has almost always been stuck with a corporate name - Blockbuster Bowl, Carquest Bowl, you name it.  However, for a couple glorious years it had the Tangerine Bowl moniker, which was perfect.  Bring it back, I say - it's a name with a long history.

Suggested name: Tangerine Bowl
Name I'll use: Tangerine Bowl or CS Bowl

- Insight Bowl

At least it doesn't have ".com" on it, still.  It used to be the Copper Bowl, but whoever the fuck "Insight" is, they've actually had the sponsorship on it longer than it was ever the Copper Bowl.  Still - that was a great name.

Suggest name: Copper Bowl
Name I'll use: Copper Bowl

- Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas

Man, this is a company that just needs to go the hell away.  I get why the "of Texas" - the grease monkeys need to make sure people don't confuse it with the one in Charlotte that they used to sponsor.  It still sounds retarded.  They went to "Texas Bowl" for a while, and I'm not sure why they couldn't at least have gone with Lone Star Bowl or something.  The game is in Houston, which used to host the excellent Bluebonnet Bowl; I suggest we make it happen.

Suggested name: Bluebonnet Bowl
Name I'll use: Texas Bowl

- Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl

Emerald Bowl was the former name of this one, which was a good enough name you could even forget it was actually corporate.  "Kraft Bowl" would only have sucked 90% - "Macaroni Bowl" would've been too easy, I suppose.  Anyway, Kraft decided their name alone wasn't good enough and decided to PC it up.  For that, we're taking "fight" out of the name.

Suggested name: Golden Gate Bowl
Name I'll use: Hunger Bowl

- Chick-Fil-A Bowl

Ah, here we are.  You know what this is supposed to be.

Suggested name: Peach Bowl
Name I'll use: Peach Bowl

- TicketCity Bowl

According to Wikipedia, "The game was called the Dallas Football Classic until TicketCity, an online reseller of sports and entertainment tickets, agreed to be the title sponsor."  It is a rule that any sporting event that calls itself the Something Classic is anything but classic.  It is always brand-new.  The use of the word "classic" is the most transparent attempt ever to sound better than you really are, because things that are classic don't have to say it.  I don't even know what to call it, maybe we should borrow that "Lone Star Bowl" name or something.

Suggested name: Whatever
Name I'll use: Ticket Bowl

- Capital One Bowl

Capital One annoys the shit out of me for trying to sponsor everything that college sports ever touch.  Seriously, the Capital One Cup?  Eff off.  Without the name "Citrus Bowl" we'd never have had fantastic zingers from Steve Spurrier like "you can't spell Citrus without UT."  So we're keeping that name, because it's a good one.

Suggested name: Citrus Bowl
Name I'll use: Citrus Bowl

- BBVA Compass Bowl

Fun protip: BBVA stands for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, a Spanish bank.  When I think college football, I think "Bilbao, Spain," don't you?  This is one of several efforts to make a bowl game work in Birmingham, Alabama, which mostly all fail because of trying to put a bowl game in Birmingham, Alabama.  Always these games are at Legion Field, so "Legion Bowl" would work fine for me.

Suggested name: Legion Bowl
Name I'll use: Compass Bowl, I suppose, but because of general crappiness of bowl it'll probably always require further clarification even if I actually called it by its full Spain-inspired name.

- GoDaddy.com Bowl

What have we told you about .com?  Not only that, but GoDaddy every year has the worst Super Bowl ads history has ever seen, in that they assume that both grown men and college guys have never seen a pair of tits before and act like 12-year-olds in possession of their very first Playboy upon seeing a not-even-revealing picture of Danica Patrick.  This name is so bad it makes me wish we had "GMAC Bowl" back.

Suggested name: Nothing, because it probably just needs to disappear.  Who travels to Mobile?
Name I'll use: Danica Bowl.  Might as well.  If I ever bother referring to it.

weekend review, bowling edition

Caution - Less of a standard weekend review and more of a bowl weekend manifesto.

In most years I'd be silently gnashing my teeth and stewing over VT's selection to the Sugar Bowl.  Of course I am not doing this.  I am serene and happy.  Obviously this is because we're going Peach Bowling on New Year's Eve because of it, and now I can look at the bright side of everything.  The ACC gets extra BCS moolah, VT will probably get killed on the field and already got killed in the realm of public opinion, and on the chance they win (heaven forbid because that's my other team they're playing) the ACC will probably have two BCS wins under its belt.  Which would be a step or two closer to restoring the ACC's football rep.

Speaking of the BCS, it is Hate the BCS Day in blog circles, and if you don't say something criticizing it, the blog police come and take your license.  So here's my criticism: it is too bad the BCS didn't nut up a couple years ago and kick the Big East out.  Since that's totally irrelevant to this year's lineup, here's another one.  It is a conspiracy theory, so get your tinfoil hats ready.  The problem, as I see it through Zapruder's movie camera, is that having the SEC in the title game has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  How so?  Pollsters think, "The SEC is the best conference."  The next logical step is to look at whichever SEC team has beaten all the other ones, and think, "Since they have beaten all these SEC teams, they have the best resume," and rank accordingly.  Lo and behold, the SEC shows up at the top.  Evidence for this?  The fact that people think teams like Arkansas are really, really good.  Objective, records-and-rankings-based lineups of their resume against, say, Big Ten teams like Michigan, don't hold up.  They just don't.  Take Arkansas - they squeaked past 6-6 Texas A&M, beat 2-10 Ole Miss by five, beat Troy by 10....and so on.  But their only losses are LSU and Alabama, so pollsters think that makes them really good.

The obvious and highly destructive counterargument to my conspiracy theory is that the SEC keeps beating other teams in the championship game.  Until they start losing consistently in it, people won't care that the middle of the conference is little better than the Big Ten's.  We will see how Kansas State and Nebraska and Michigan State fare against their SEC counterparts.

Surprisingly, though, the SEC-rematch championship game bothers me less than it bothers some people.  Wait - no.  It bothers me differently.  Even though I just spent a whole bunch time railing against the SEC-opoly, honest assessment compels me to say that I actually do think LSU and Alabama have the two best resumes in the country.  I haven't updated my blogpoll ballot with the full system to see if the Okla-stomping changes that, but it's at best 50/50.  Oklahoma State was below Oklahoma before that, though, so it's iffy.  As much as I wanted to punch Nick Saban's smug, classless face on TV yesterday, he's right - Alabama has more or less proven itself.

What bothers me is that the SEC hype machine spent all of 2006's final weekend screaming that there should be no title game rematch between Michigan and Ohio State.  Remember this?  #1 vs #2, Michigan lost, and "they had their chance.  They lost.  It's someone else's turn."  They lost by three (on the road instead of at home), which sounds familiar.  Now you have the SEC hype machine telling us that "this is the system, and it worked.  It gave us the two best teams."  Bah.  I wanted Oklahoma State because I like when a middle-class team gets a shot, but the slobbershow yesterday was nauseating.

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Anyway, enough bitching.  People are saying that the BCS produced some terrible matchups this year and the bowl season in general looks flat.  I say, they're fucking crazy.  What is there to bitch about in these matchups beyond anything you might want to say about OkSt vs. Alabama?  Oregon-Wisconsin?  That's a great matchup!  Stanford-Oklahoma State?  That's a fantastic matchup!  Michigan-Virginia Tech?  That's a great matchup!  People who want Kansas State are completely splitting hairs.  Is K-State the better team?  Yes.  Kind of.  By a lot?  No.  Before this weekend I had VT nine spots higher on my ballot anyway. Don't even get me started on Boise State - they beat Georgia, which 15+ other teams in the country can do, and their conference schedule includes Colorado State, UNLV, and New Mexico.  When the third-best team in your conference is Wyoming, you do not have a strength of schedule argument.  The only semi-dud is Clemson-West Virginia, which admittedly looks more like a Gator Bowl kind of matchup than anything, but shit, they're bowl-eligible - they gotta play somewhere.

By the way, on Boise State, if anyone tells you the Mountain West is an underrated conference and Boise and TCU are deserving of consideration based on past results, ask 'em why the conference can't get any bowl affiliation better than the Las Vegas Bowl against a weak, middling Pac-12 team?  These bowl affiilations were not negotiated that long ago, and if the MWC was a really attractive deal, you'd think its champion - usually TCU, possibly Utah back when the affiliations were set - would be in high demand.

Oh, and anyone who says Michigan should be removed in favor of someone - even someone ineligible because of conference restrictions, if you like - should try me.  Gimme a someone and I'll tell you why you're wrong.

Lot of other really interesting matchups, too.  That's what bowl season does.  My own favorites:

- The aforementioned SEC games: MSU-Georgia, Nebraska-South Carolina, KSU-Arkansas.  Do you know, I think there's a real chance the SEC could lose all of them - not to mention the possibility that Ohio State will beat Florida and UVA will beat Auburn.  All those SEC teams - except for Auburn, admittedly - are matched up against comparable-level teams from other conferences.  Time to see what the SEC is made of - I say it is less dominant than believed, and that will play out.

- Penn State-Houston.  This is fascinating.  Penn State is probably the best defense Houston will see all season, so that's exciting; on the other side of the ball, Houston has got no defense whatsoever which matches up great with Penn State's useless offense.  The TicketScalper Bowl lucked into a good one.

P.S. - the party line is that Penn State fell so far because the Sandusky scandal made them poisonous.  I don't buy it.  Not that there aren't some grains of truth to that, but the fact is, and always was, that Michigan, Nebraska, and both B1GCG participants were going to be ahead of Penn State in the pecking order.  All it took to know that was to watch Penn State ugly their way through the conference schedule.  The logical landing spot would've been the Gator Bowl, but the Gator Bowl was never gonna pass on Florida, and that's who PSU played last year.  It's not at all illogical they wouldn't want to rematch 'em.  So they took Ohio State.  It's even possible Iowa wasn't available for the Gator, since they and the ex-Copper share a 4/5 pick.  At most, Penn State fell one slot below where you'd expect - I don't think their placement is entirely a side effect of Sandusky.  At any rate, it should be a very good game.

- I'm also diggin' on BYU-Tulsa, two teams which quietly put together winning seasons.

- And hey, how about the Hunger Bowl.  Illinois and UCLA bring a pair of interim coaches to the game because both of them choked away games like it was their job.

- And finally, the CS Bowl had their eye on this matchup for a long time and you knew they weren't gonna let it go: FSU/Notre Dame.  FSU is a very talented and underachieving team (uh-oh Jimbo?) and ND has got a lot of talent of its own.  That's a great pairing.

I'll leave the bowl stuff behind with this final thought: It's easy to tell that the media types only want to bitch and moan, and have no interest whatsoever in when things actually turn out right.  They profess to want things to "turn out right," but never care when they actually do.  You might even say it's an anti-BCS agenda, although I wouldn't go that far because when they get what they want and a playoff is eventually instituted, they will continue writing stories about who got screwed and why the system is bullshit.  How is it "easy to tell?"  Because once VT was placed in the Sugar, even if that was "wrong," the absolute correct team was placed in the Peach, and nobody gives a flying fuck.  On pure merit, who-beat-who, Virginia is the right team for the Peach, period, exclamation point.  And the closest thing I've seen to a comment on it from the ESPN-types is Heather Dinich sniveling that "this is sort of like being the boss for a day because the boss is sick."  Well, guess what: Nick thinks he can do everything from the golf course, Liz is too busy rocking out to Pandora, Mayor Dennis spends all his time at the water cooler, and Matt ignores the boss whenever he's speaking.  Maybe we're only in charge because the boss is out today, but guess who's getting the promotion come eval time.  There's still something to be said for outperforming one's peers.

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I said I'd try and get to the last remnants of the high school season, and so I will:

- Max Valles is a state champion on one of the most dominating teams that state has ever seen.  They outscored opponents 474-19 and haven't allowed a touchdown in seven games.  The final score of their state final: 51-0.

- Andre Miles-Redmond and Hermitage suffered what I'd call a slight upset loss to Centreville in the state semis.  Not an earthshaking result, but a little bit surprising.

- C.J. Moore and Buford slipped, but didn't fall, and will play for the state title in Georgia next week.

And speaking of recruiting, I wonder when the last time was that I updated the recruiting board.  I'm guessing October.  London and co. got 2012 done in a hurry, so there hasn't been much to speak of.  But it's time to create a little movement:

- Removed FB Nathan Staub from blue, who committed to UNC.

- Removed LB Quanzell Lambert from red; by now I'm sure he and UVA have gone their separate ways, probably quite some time ago.

- Moved RB Wes Brown from red to yellow.

- Moved OT Kyle Fuller, ATH Cyrus Jones, and S Mike Tyson from green to yellow.

- Moved WR Stefon Diggs from yellow to green.  I'm not sure the chances of us landing him are really at green levels, but at this stage of the recruiting game I use the colors more as "who you should watch" anyway.

Tune in tomorrow as it will be part two of required football blogging: I present this year's version of my playoff proposal.

so many bowls

More than ever before, in fact. In an effort to saturate the three weeks between December 20 and January 8 with enough college football to make your eyes bleed, the NCAA went on a bowl-certifying binge last year, giving us 34 games, almost two per day.

So what's what in the bowl season? I'll tell you, that's what:

Best Non-Crystal-Football-Awarding BCS Game:

Texas and OSU is a very compelling matchup, but Penn State-USC in the Rose Bowl is where it's at. I kind of have this feeling that Michigan is the Big Ten team that belongs in the Rose Bowl - it's sort of a birthright and comes with the territory of being a Michigan fan - but PSU/USC matches up two storied teams playing very, very good football. And (this is the kicker here) the Fiesta Bowl is being played in a glitzy, sterile, corporate NFL stadium, while the Rose Bowl is being played in the Rose Bowl. January 1st, 4:00 Eastern, Pasadena - this is the proper date, time, and place for a college football game.

Best Five Non-BCS Games In No Particular Order:

Ball State-Tulsa in the G*** Bowl. Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my top 15? These two were the surprise teams of the year for pretty much most of the year and occupied a lofty spot in the rankings despite being in crappy conferences. This is a great matchup.

TCU-Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl. It's like the non-BCS championship.

Michigan State-Georgia in the ex-Citrus Bowl. Javon Ringer and Knowshon Moreno. I hate it when the media portrays this sort of matchup as Ringer versus Moreno, because they will never be on the field at the same time. Nevertheless it's exciting. No matter who's on the field, all eyes will be on the running back.

Clemson-Nebraska in the Gator Bowl. The implications are fascinating. Clemson was handed the world, then given up for dead. Thanks to whatever magic Dabo Swinney pulled out of a hat, they've resurfaced on New Year's Day against a team that wasn't ever supposed to be. Both started cold but finished hot. A win for either team will give some pretty restless fanbases a reason to feel all warm and fuzzy going into next year.

Nevada-Maryland in the Humanitarian Bowl. This has train-wreck appeal. Nevada has that quasi-gimmicky and quite successful pistol offense; Maryland has that penchant for sending their evil twin, Sucky Maryland, on the road instead of their actual team. Whether it's Actual Maryland or Sucky Maryland that shows up on the blue turf, I don't think it'll be a close game either way.

Most Craptacular Matchup:

Northern Illinois-Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl. You can't blame the IB people here. They've got these contracts in place with the Big 12 and SEC, and that usually provides a pretty decent second-tier matchup of sort-of-respectable BCS teams - and in any case, they're teams people know about. Then the BCS swallowed up two teams from each conference, leaving the bottom empty and the Independence Bowl scrambling. I'll be watching just because Louisiana Tech has been around since forever but has never actually played a televised game, except for once by accident - rumor has it the intern was supposed to hook up the feed for the Louisiana State-Virginia Tech game but got confused.

Prison Rape Waiting To Happen:

Central Michigan-Florida Atlantic in the Motor City Bowl. Adam Weber of Minnesota is 6'3, 220: a big quarterback with a good arm and a decent set of wheels. He passed for 235 yards and ran for 43 more in a 37-3 shellacking of FAU. Dan LeFevour of CMU is 6'3, 226: a bigger quarterback with a better arm and a better set of wheels. This bodes ill for the Owls.

Games I Wanted To See Instead:

Iowa-Oregon State in the Destroyers Of Dreams Bowl. Would have been a decent game, too.

Georgia Tech-Navy in the Paul Johnson Bowl. Come on. Tell me this wouldn't have been totally sweet. They might have set a modern-day record for fewest forward passes. Zero would be a distinct possibility.

Texas Tech-Tulsa in the Fuck Defense Bowl. The 2nd and 5th scoring offenses against the 69th and 84th scoring defenses. Woooooooo!

Virginia and/or Michigan against anyone at all. God damn it.

Notre Lame Hur Hur:

Notre Dame hasn't won a bowl game for freakin' ages. It's been so long ago that 88 Division I-A teams have won a bowl game since the last time the Irish did (that would be the '93 season, 1994 Cotton Bowl against Texas A&M.)

I'm not going to bother listing all 88 teams; suffice to say, it's most of the ones you'd expect and quite a few you wouldn't. If Notre Dame loses to Hawaii this year, the number will go up to 89 once Western Michigan and Rice duke it out to see who gets to be added to the list. Five other teams - Northwestern, Ball State, Buffalo, Vanderbilt, and Louisiana Tech - have their shot at glory as well; the total could go as high as 94.