Yesterday was the good – the six best bowl games. Today, the bad – the five worst bowl games:
1. New Orleans Bowl – Southern Mississippi and Middle Tennessee offer a couple of interesting factors – most significant, this is the final game for Southern Miss running back Damion Fletcher. Despite that, it’s hard to imagine a pairing that could be less inspiring and less captivating to anyone from the casual fan to the avid follower. Most bowls give us a reason to care. This one just plain doesn’t.
2. Alamo Bowl – Michigan State and Texas Tech should have been an interesting game, but it won’t be this year. Michigan State has all sorts of troubles – eight players are suspended for this game after a dorm fight. Texas Tech hasn’t had a great year, but the one thing we know for sure is that they can pass and that they are going to do that a whole lot. That’s going to make for a terrible game, because Michigan State ranks 103rd in pass defense. A distracted, under-manned team doesn’t make for a good game at the best of times, but when the weaknesses of that team play exactly into the strength of their opponents you have the potential for a disaster.
3. Little Caesars Pizza Bowl – The name alone is reason enough to hate this bowl. That’s not the only problem with the Marshall – Ohio matchup, though. Ohio is okay – they won their division in the MAC – but they are far from interesting to watch, and they don’t do anything particularly well. Marshall had a rocky year, finishing the season with a humiliating blowout loss to UTEP that dropped them to 6-6 and prompted head coach Mark Snyder to resign effective immediately. Marshall at their best isn’t much to watch right now, and there is almost no chance of them being at their best.
4. International Bowl – South Florida is in the midst of an ugly collapse – they have lost five of their last seven. Northern Ilinois is a 7-5 team that lost to pretty much every decent team it played. The game is played in the Rogers Centre in Toronto – aka the SkyDome – one of the uglier barns there is outside of the Metrodome. This game just isn’t going to be good.
5. Outback Bowl – Northwestern deserves some respect – they had a couple of nice upsets and were better than expected. Their reward for that is playing an Auburn squad that is a total mess. They lost five of their last seven, and have been the antithesis of competitive down the stretch. This might be a decent game, but I sincerely doubt it.
