The Bowl Reshuffling
A comparison of the Big Ten's old bowl scenario and its new scenario:
left to right: x, f, f(x)
Chart? Chart.
OLD SCHOOL | NEW SCHOOL | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pick | Bowl | Location | Opponent | Bowl | Location | Opponent | |
2 | Citrus | Orlando | SEC #2 | Citrus | Orlando | SEC #2 | |
At this point the Citrus is the premiere non-BCS bowl and usually has a great matchup that the Big 10 loses unless Michigan's in it. Fine. Downside: annoying commercials. | |||||||
3 | Outback | Tampa Bay | SEC #3 | Outback | Tampa Bay | SEC #3 | |
Less enthused about keeping the Outback around just because I'd rather play a different conference. | |||||||
4 | Alamo | San Antonio | Big 12 #3 | Gator | Jacksonville | ACC #3 | |
Bler. Never been to Jacksonville but the reviews are not good, and this game continues the Big Ten's tradition of playing up. Yet another NYD game. In double-BCS years “we played on New Year's Day” will mean you finished in the top half of the conference. Woo. Small bonus: the Gator's defection is part of a major downgrade for Big East bowls, which will make ND's options when they don't make the BCS even worse. | |||||||
5 | Citrus Jr. | Orlando | ACC #4 | Insight | Phoenix | Big 12 #4 | |
Note: the Gator and Insight are going to swap the 4/5 picks. In this setup, though, the Big Ten is basically swapping the ACC #3 for the Big 12 #3 and vice versa for the #4s. This is not going to help the bowl record much, though the Alamo always seemed even more horrible than you'd expect: remember that year when 10-3 Texas played an Iowa team that was 6-6 and 2-6 in the Big Ten? | |||||||
6 | Insight | Phoenix | Big 12 #6 | Texas (Probably) | Houston | Probably Big 12 #6 | |
Relocating to Houston. | |||||||
7 | Motor City | Detroit | Random MAC | Motor City | Detroit | Random MAC | |
Game will lose what little dignity it has if it ends up named after Little Caesar's, but whatever. |
Unless you care about relocating from San Antonio to Jacksonville, it's basically the status quo. But I didn't like the status quo, which has two games in which the Big Ten plays up and has that near-identical (Florida games against SEC opponents) pair at the top. The Big Ten is in a similar situation as Notre Dame is when they get dragged into a BCS bowl at a weak 9-3 and then pummeled: so attractive to television they're offered big money to sign up for games they probably shouldn't be in.
I guess the dropoff from the #3 team to the #4 team seems steeper in the ACC and Jacksonville will be less of a homefield for Random ACC team than it is for Random Big 12 team. Both of those effects are marginal if they even exist.
One downside I hadn't thought of until Tim brought it up: the Citrus-Citrus Jr. pairing provided you something to do if you went down to the Citrus. A couple days before your game there was another football game at the same place. I guess this will still be the case but it probably won't have a team you have a rooting interest in.
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