Andy

Dallas and Atlanta both losing yesterday really helped Carolina, giving them much more breathing room for a playoff spot in the event they lose tonight. I'm excited as hell for this game. I hope our offense figured out how to do something vs Tampa in the last couple of months.

The full bowl schedule: EagleBank Bowl in Washington, DC – 12/20, 11 am (ESPN) Wake Forest vs Navy New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque, NM – 12/20, 2:30 pm (ESPN) Colorado State vs Fresno State magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg, FL – 12/20, 4:30 pm (ESPN2) Memphis vs South Florida Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl in Las Vegas, NV – 12/20, 8 pm (ESPN) (17) BYU vs Arizona R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl in New Orleans, LA – 12/21, 8:15 pm (ESPN) Southern Mississippi vs Troy San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, CA – 12/23, 8 pm (ESPN) (9) Boise State vs (11) TCU Sheraton Hawaii Bowl in Honolulu, HI – 12/24, 8 pm (ESPN) Hawaii vs Notre Dame Motor City Bowl in Detroit, MI – 12/26, 8 pm (ESPN) Florida Atlantic vs Central Michigan Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, NC – 12/27, 1 pm (ESPN) West Virginia vs North Carolina Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, FL – 12/27, 4:30 pm (ESPN) Wisconsin vs Florida State Emerald Bowl in San Francisco, CA – 12/27, 8 pm (ESPN) California vs Miami Independence Bowl in Shreveport, LA – 12/28, 8:15 pm (ESPN) Northern Illinois vs Louisiana Tech Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, AL – 12/29, 3 pm (ESPN) NC State vs Rutgers Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, TX – 12/29, 8 pm (ESPN) (25) Missouri vs Northwestern Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, ID – 12/30, 4:30 pm (ESPN) Maryland vs Nevada Texas Bowl in Houston, TX – 12/30, 8 pm (NFL Network) Rice vs Western Michigan Pacific Life Holiday Bowl in San Diego, CA – 12/30, 8 pm (ESPN) (13) Oklahoma State vs (15) Oregon Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, TX – 12/31, 12 pm (ESPN) Houston vs Air Force Brut Sun Bowl in El Paso, TX – 12/31, 2 pm (CBS) (24) Oregon State vs (18) Pittsburgh Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN – 12/31, 3:30 pm (ESPN) Boston College vs Vanderbilt Insight Bowl in Tempe, AZ – 12/31, 5:30 pm (NFL Network) Kansas vs Minnesota Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta, GA – 12/31, 7:30 pm (ESPN) LSU vs (14) Georgia Tech Outback Bowl in Tampa, FL – 1/1, 11 am (ESPN) South Carolina vs Iowa Capital One Bowl in Orlando, FL – 1/1, 1 pm (ABC) (16) Georgia vs (19) Michigan State Konica Minolta Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, FL – 1/1, 1 pm (CBS) Clemson vs Nebraska AT&T Cotton Bowl – 1/2, 2 pm (FOX) (20) Ole Miss vs (8) Texas Tech AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, TN – 1/2, 5 pm (ESPN) Kentucky vs East Carolina International Bowl in Toronto, ON – 1/3, 12 pm (ESPN2) Connecticut vs Buffalo GMAC Bowl in Mobile, AL – 1/6, 8 pm (ESPN) Tulsa vs (23) Ball State BCS Games: Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA – 1/1, 4:30 pm (ABC) (6) Penn State vs (5) USC FedEx Orange Bowl in Miami, FL – 1/1, 8 pm (FOX) (21) Virginia Tech vs (12) Cincinnati Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, LA – 1/2, 8 pm (FOX) (4) Alabama vs (7) Utah Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, AZ – 1/5, 8 pm (FOX) (3) Texas vs (10) Ohio State FedEx National Championship Game in Miami, FL – 1/8, 8 pm (FOX) (1) Florida vs (2) Oklahoma

Only four spots left to be filled.

Cincy to the Orange, meaning Ohio State probably to the Fiesta against Texas and Utah to the Sugar against Bama.

Notre Dame will indeed play Hawaii in Hawaii, on Christmas Eve night. Boise State/TCU in the championship of non-BCS little guys in San Diego.

The more MAC bowls the better. Western Michigan should also be playing somewhere. Now I'm seeing that ND might go to the Hawaii Bowl to play...Hawaii. Whatever.

Notre Dame will choose between playing Rice in the Texas Bowl and playing Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl.

The Motor City Bowl has taken Central Michigan and Ball State will play Tulsa in the GMAC Bowl.

I get Jags/Bears and Vikings/Lions. I think I'll go do something else.

Skip Holtz is evidently headed to Syracuse. Good hire by the Orange, though I would've thought Skip could have gotten a better offer.

I guess it's pretty easy to beat Notre Dame when only two players show up. Harangody 25 and 16 coming off of pneumonia, Tory Jackson 13 points, nothing from anyone else. And now we won't enter BE play looking any better than any other year.

These Army and Navy uniforms are awful.

So I just drove 3.5 hours home from Detroit after the most soul-crushing night in my short time as an alum (B, I was on the sidelines so if you saw me it was only for fleeting seconds at the end of out of bounds plays), and I've come to the conclusion that Ball State did not play well. All year their top strength was playing disciplined mistake-free football...10 turnovers all year, 5 tonight. 4 lost fumbles all year, 4 tonight. There was a sketchy replay call before both the fumble scores by Buffalo - on one, MiQuale Lewis got a foot inside the pylon but didn't get the TD even after review, and on the other, Briggs Orsbon caught a pass but had it overturned on no evidence that I can see - but that's no excuse. Credit Buffalo, they didn't let us get away with those mistakes. I have for a while now though had the opinion that something needs to be done about replay. I swear, every game I watch now there's at least one ridiculous replay reversal where the official in the booth completely ignores the 'indisputable evidence to overturn the call on the field' rule. As for the bowl picture, we would've gone back to Detroit for the Motor City Bowl (they had first pick of MAC schools), but will now take Western or Central Michigan. GMAC in Mobile, Alabama, has the 2nd pick and will take us. Buffalo has already accepted a bid to the International Bowl in Toronto. The only good news to come from tonight was that Nate Davis said in the postgame press conference that he would be returning next season. He claims he was never going pro, but I have to believe he wants to win the league title. BSU will probably be MAC favorites next year with Nate back.

can we get some love for the time honored traditions of the magicjack Bowl, the R+L Carriers Bowl and the San Diego Credit Union Pointsettia Bowl please? You're going to love when I post the bowl game thread. I included all the sponsor names as a commentary on how ridiculous they look when typed out. I'm leaving for Detroit shortly. I'll be on the sidelines. Go Cards.

The correct term is Bowls. Bowels.

There's a Big East/SEC Invitational, but it's only four games and Notre Dame wasn't picked to play in it for the second year in a row for some reason. So my interest is pretty minimal. At least we've got Ohio State at Lucas Oil this weekend. That should be an interesting test, especially if Luke isn't back from pneumonia by then.

On Bill Simmons's podcast this week, Mike Lombardi of the NFL Network said that the teams with a chance to win the Super Bowl are Tennessee, the Giants, maybe the Cowboys, Pittsburgh, and...Tampa Bay. The more I think about this game, the more I'm convinced we're going to get reamed and have to, at best, go play at Minnesota - where we already lost this year - or Arizona - who should've beaten us in Carolina - in the first round

It's a decent article, and his overall point is correct. But I read that a week or so ago and was flummoxed that the impetus for it was that Nate Davis isn't getting Heisman consideration. I mean...I love Nate. He's the best player we've ever had and has a really good chance to go down as the best QB the MAC has ever seen (in college anyway, we'll see how the NFL goes). But though I think the argument against our schedule has been exaggerated at times, Nate simply hasn't played a good enough defense to even begin to get considered for that award. Ball State was trying to get the game in Detroit...if Boise were located in, say, Iowa, I think Ball State would've done it. I think the decision came down to money more so than anything. The university would've lost money on our ticket allotment alone for that bowl game because no one was going to be able to go to Boise on a few weeks' notice. (Schools have to buy any tickets they're allotted that don't get bought - BSU lost money going to the International Bowl last year due to this.) ESPN personalities, for the most part, can go screw themselves when it comes to Ball State. I love that the network has broadcasted six of our games (two more to come), but crap like Chris Fowler leaving us 25th-ranked for forever, coming out and saying he wouldn't vote us any higher due to the schedule, etc. is ridiculous. We still seem for the most part to be being considered a cutesy little story as opposed to a good football team. Of course, after Whitlock eviscerated him in his column, Fowler moved us from 25th to 19th after we beat Western Mich. But guess who dropped us from 16th to 19th for no apparent reason after we crushed a nine-win team in our regular season finale? ESPN colleague Kirk Herbstreit. It's like they had some sort of deal or something.

Well then...I didn't know that. Looks like the Motor City matchup would be Minnesota - Gophers are tied with Wisconsin for 6th but I assume the Badgers would get more attention for the 6th tie-in.

That's absolutely ridiculous. not really. I watched BSU a few times this year and they did fine against the inferior talent of the MAC. Mediocre Big Ten teams are just more talented than MAC teams. It's hard to argue that. I have no problem saying it's not a guaranteed win (my previous comment about beating those teams was just referring to the fact that a win wouldn't help us, not dismissing those opponents as pushovers). But to say we'd 'likely lose' to a team that should've lost to Cal Poly (Wisconsin) or a team that got beat by a team we crushed (Illinois) or a team that should've lost to NIU - who we crushed - and got crushed by Michigan (Minnesota) is a little unrealistic to me. I know this is all transitive and that's not overly predictive, but that's all I have to go on.

That's absolutely ridiculous.

I am incredibly nervous about the Carolina/Tampa game. If we lose our schedule is such that we could easily miss the playoffs after that.

Ball State has turned down Boise State's request to play in the Humanitarian Bowl against the Broncos, and the BSU Bowl will not happen because Boise would rather play TCU in San Diego than go to a neutral site to play BSU. I don't like this move for either BSU, but I like it for us less. Pounding a Minnesota/Illinois/Wisconsin in Detroit is not going to do anything for us.

Meh, Weis coming back isn't good but it shouldn't be a disaster. If Brian Kelly ends up getting hired by someone else this off-season I will feel worse about it. Charlie being who he is, he'll probably make more efforts to shake things up this off-season, efforts that should include dumping John Latina as OL coach and Brian Polian as special teams coach. Hopefully it will also include addressing the fact that we basically have two defensive coordinators (Tenuta and Brown). Once again by schedule alone ND will probably win 6 or 7 games in 2009. Nevada replaces San Diego State and Washington State (neutral-site in San Antonio) replaces @UNC, and besides that it's the same relatively weak schedule as 2008.