Big Ten Bowling for Dollars

First of all, let's begin with my picks for the Big Ten bowl that I made prior to the bowl season.

Bowl	Matchup	My Pick	Winner
Champs	FSU v Wisc.	FSU	FSU
Alamo	Mizzou v NW	Mizzou	Mizzou
Insight	Kansas v Minn.	Kansas	Kansas
Outback	SC v Iowa	Iowa	Iowa
Capital One	Georgia v MSU	Georgia	Georgia
Rose	USC v PSU	USC	USC
Fiesta	Texas v tOSU	Texas	???

So, as you can see, its been a bad bad year for the Big Ten this bowl season. But, on the flipside, and more importantly, its been a good Big Ten bowl season for us here at MBN. But, I digress.

1 and 5 is a good if you like being really bad at bowls. I can say that because not only did Michigan not lose a bowl game this season, we never even went to one. Given the struggles of just about every other Big Ten school, these bowls that everyone speaks of, seem highly overrated.

Okay...NOW I digress.

I am not at all surpised of every bowl a Big Ten school played in this year. I was slightly impressed with how close the Alamo bowl was considering NW (not NU, I don't care what you say, you're still NW)...didn't really even belong on the same field as Missouri. I've seen Missouri a couple times this year and it was obvious they just didn't play up to their potential. But it was funny to see how Chase Daniel's parents reacted to every single play in the last 5 minutes of the game. Seriously ESPN, WTF???

Wisconsin and Minnesota had no business being in a bowl game this year. And they both drew just terrible matchups. Those games sucked. If anything good comes from the Big Ten sucking so bad in bowl games lately, is that maybe we can have less Big Ten teams in bowl games from now on. I mean when 7 or 8 teams from your conference basically all go off to play away games against the creme of the crop from more competitive conferences, only badness can insue. With the exception of Iowa, every Big Ten school drew bad matchups. Call it what you want, but there is no way to hide that the Big Ten is a terrible conference right now.

MSU had the golden opportunity to make a statement against Georgia in the Outback Bowl. But a second half defensive meltdown ended that dream. I didn't watch much of the game, but I remember being slightly impressed that the score at halftime was so low. So I started watching. Then I saw Stafford go 14 for 17 in the second half while throwing 3 touchdowns. And, as suspected Michigan State looked like a lowly Big Ten team playing against a much better SEC team. So stereotypical.

I won't even go into Penn State's loss to USC. Simply calling it a loss does not do this game justice. USC looked so damn good. Even Herbie and Musburger were calling for a plus 1 system so USC could play the winner of the Florida/Oklahoma game. Somehow, even they forgot about Texas.

Speaking of Texas, they play tOSU tonight. As you could see, I picked the Longhorns in this one. Not only for obvious reasons, but because the part of the family that I inherited a couple years ago would have some choice words for me.

But I try to view this game from a non-biased and objective point of view, but I just can't. All I can see is tOSU getting humbled by Florida and LSU. Now I won't discount the fact that tOSU has done relatively well in recent Fiesta Bowls, and this is not an SEC team they are playing. But I just don't see them beating Texas.

Call the Big 12 up or down, it really doesn't matter. This bowl season has been strange, if for no other reason that the Pac-10 went 5-0.

But, sorry Big Ten fans, our conference is once again the punching bag of the college football world. And even a win tonight against Texas will do very little to persuade anyone otherwise. I really don't care how the Big Ten is perceived as a whole on a national level. To me, we're already known as a bad conference, and still got tOSU into the Fiesta Bowl...so how bad are things, really?

All I know is, Michigan will make it back to a bowl maybe next year, definitely in 2010. And when they do, how far they go will have very little to do with how strong their conference schedule is.