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It’s a tale as old as time. Two gladiators are set to do battle. For one, eternal glory. For the other, death. For the masses, blood and guts and an escape from the misery that is their daily lives. For the sports writer, a chance to throw in their two cents on who is going to win, and why.
USA Today put out their predictions for the upcoming bowl season. Apparently they are so astute that they don’t need to watch a meaningful game before coming up with such a list. If you are so inclined, you can read about them here.
The media has told me for most of the last month that Florida State and Alabama is the biggest opening game in college football history. That’s really sad, because apparently the game doesn’t mean anything. Nor does Oklahoma visiting the Horseshoe a week later. According to USA Today, all four teams will make the playoffs. I don’t like that. The regular season should mean more than that. I get we live in a world where you don’t have to be perfect to make the playoffs, but huge non-conference match-ups should mean something. I suppose teams wouldn’t schedule them if that’s the case. Enough about that, it’s for a rant another day.
One thing I love about the list are all the intriguing bowl games for B1G teams. Since they put out a dumb, way too early list, I am going to give an exceptionally dumber brief breakdown of the matches.
The meandering Iowa Hawkeyes taking the pretty boys from UCLA, with their, supposed, great QB would be an interesting contrast of styles. The uniform contrasts would be nice, too.
They have the Nebraska Cornhuskers taking on the Tennessee Volunteers. The two fan bases could break out their Scott Frost and Tee Martin jerseys and give a toast to the good old days before the teams embark on an exciting, though error filled, game.
Wow, the Hoosiers would be taking on Panthers. I really don’t care about that one. To be fair, I don’t think the people in Indiana or Pittsburgh would really care, either.
The fighting Pat Fitzgeralds will be taking on the Colorado Buffaloes. On one side, you have a former player turned coach who will most likely still be coaching Northwestern when we are all long dead and buried. On the other sideline you will most likely have an interim coach. Let’s face it, if Colorado goes bowling 2 years in a row, he is gone.
The Michigan Wolverines would be taking on the LSU Tigers in the Les Miles Bowl. While the football would be fun to watch, it would be much more entertaining to watch Les Miles on a reality television program watching the game. The night before the game, Miles, Harbaugh, and Orgeron could all go out for a night of drinking. You can pretend you wouldn’t watch, but you know damn well you would.
Then the New Year’s Six bowl games would have Penn State taking on Clemson and Ohio State taking on Florida State. No need for pithy little comments, because the actual football would be fantastic in those games.
One interesting note is that they don’t have Minnesota going to a bowl game in PJ Fleck’s first season. Don’t be surprised if he has that team buying in already, and while they wont be national championship caliber, I do believe they will be good enough to win 6 games. In fact, I would almost guarantee they will be at least 4-1 to start the season.
TL:DR? Me either. It’s really just a post so that the wonderful OTE community can give their predictions for the upcoming season.