The SEC and Bowl Contracts
by Purple Reign on Aug 6, 2009 9:01 PM CDT
3 comments
Ed. Bumped from the FanPosts.
The end of the 2009 football season also brings all current bowl contracts to an end, which means you'll likely see stories on negotiations sprinkled in the news throughout football season. The biggest story to date has been that of the Gator Bowl trying to claw its way into the SEC lineup. Below you'll get a small dose of what will probably happen with more of what I'd like to see.
The Capital One Bowl (Citrus for you old timers) holds all the cards right now. They have the biggest payout and best non-BCS game out there. If possible, the SEC and Big Ten are going to renew their contracts, with reservations. The Citrus Bowl stadium is dying and is poorly located in Orlando. If both conferences resign for four more years, you can bet that it will be the last time unless the stadium gets major renovations or a new one is built. If neither is done, it would create a major shift in the bowl landscape come contract time in 2013.
If the SEC resigns with the Capital One Bowl, everything will probably fall into place the same way it is now. Getting into the Gator Bowl would be great for the SEC, replacing the Independence, Liberty or Papajohns.com Bowl. However the Capital One has a clause in its contract that no SEC or Big Ten team can play at the same time as it's game is going on, an effort to boost TV ratings. The Gator and Capital One play at the same time, so something would have to give.
What would I like to see? Give the Cotton Bowl the first choice after the BCS. It's tradition is by far the best among all non-BCS bowl games and it now has a sparkling $1 Billion stadium to play in thanks to Jerry Jones. It seems only logical that the SEC's No. 2 should play the Big 12's No. 2 team, they are the two best conferences.
After that, I wouldn't make too many changes. I've never been a big fan of the Outback Bowl, so I wouldn't mind bumping the Peach or Music City Bowl up a slot or two, Nashville is a city for a game and New Year's Eve there is a blast!
As a fan, I'd love it if the SEC matched up with the Pac 10 for a game each year also. I get sick of watching us play three Big 10 teams a year. I would absolutely go see LSU take on UCLA or someone else from the left coast in, say, the Sun Bowl. Like the Cotton, it's another game with solid tradition. Wait, check that, I don't want to go to El Paso. How about the Insight Bowl, only we go back to calling it the Copper Bowl. Phoenix would be fantastic in late December. Or the Las Vegas Bowl, anything to go to Vegas.
That said, my line up would look as follows (obviously some bowls would have to step up their payout):
No. 1 - Sugar
No. 2 - Cotton
No. 3 - Capital One
No. 4 - Copper (sorry Insight)
No. 5 - Peach
No. 6 - Music City
No. 7 - Outback
No. 8 - Liberty
No. 9 - PapaJohns.com (yeah, I live in Birmingham. If we could ever get that dome they keep talking about, I'd move this up).
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My ideal line up:
Liked your article. While this probably isn’t realistic (not just for the SEC, but also for the other conferences that would have to shake their bowl agreements up), this would be my ideal line-up based on factors including history, location, and potential matchups:
No. 1 – Sugar Bowl (vs. BCS at-large) – Obviously this one stays at the top. It has the history, the BCS credibility (apologies for the oxymoron), and for LSU, the home-field advantage.
No. 2 – Cotton Bowl (vs. Big 12 #2) – I completely agree with your argument to bump this one up. The new stadium looks incredible, plus the Big 12 appears primed to give us a great matchup year-in and year-out for quite some time.
No. 3 – Capital One Bowl (vs. Big 10 #2/3) – At the moment, this is the best non-BCS bowl by payout, and it’s always fun to see the Big 10 and SEC go at it (outside of the BCS title game). No need to knock this down any further.
No. 4 – Poinsetta Bowl or Emerald Bowl (vs. Pac 10 #3/4) – I also would like to see a good PAC 10/SEC bowl matchup every year, but I have decided to change the location to the Poinsetta Bowl in San Diego (taking over the Mountain West . . . something I’m sure the bowl would be more than willing to do to gain more ratings). Both locations are great in December, particularly San Diego. This would also give us a chance to send an SEC school out to California, which is the one major football recruiting state that SEC teams don’t get to visit on a regular basis.
No. 5 – Peach (vs. ACC #4/5) – I am also willing to bump this bowl up with one condition: that they go back to calling themselves the Peach Bowl.
No. 6 – Gator Bowl (vs. Big East #4/5/6) – Yes, I know the Gator bowl is currently looking to bump out the Big East in favor of the SEC, but I’d rather see them knock out the ACC. We already have that matchup in the Peach Bowl, and this seems like as good a place as any for us to meet a Big East team. By this point the SEC has had a chance to play all of the other major conferences, so it would be nice to take a shot at the last one remaining.
No. 7 – Music City Bowl (vs. MWC #1/2/3) – So the Mountain West wants to join the big boys, do they? I say, let’s give them a chance. Let one of their top teams take the place of the ACC in this bowl (it’s not as though the ACC and SEC don’t schedule enough games against each other during the regular season that they need to play two separate bowl games). After all, the MWC’s current bowl lineup only gives them the chance to play two PAC 10 dregs, two WAC teams, and one C-USA team in the post-season. Over the past decade, they have more than proved they are worth an upgrade.
No. 8 – Outback Bowl (vs. BIG 10 dregs) – There’s more than enough history in this bowl to stop me from dumping it completely. Tampa is a pretty decent city to visit in December, as well.
No. 9 – PapaJohns.com (vs. C-USA champ) – Now that they’ve just earned a tie-in with the Big East, here I am trying to send them back to allowing mid-majors. This is basically the Liberty Bowl, but in Alabama instead. We already have a game in Tennessee, so I think it would be nice to spread the wealth around at least a little.
Under this scenario, we bump the Mountain West out of one bowl game (Poinsetta) but put them in another (Music City Bowl). We bounce the ACC out of two (Gator and Music City), but they can take our old slots in the Liberty and Independence. The Big East also loses their spot in the Papa John’s Bowl to the C-USA champ, but they just earned their spot in it anyway, and they can always take over C-USA’s spot in the Liberty.
Apologies to the Liberty Bowl (for the reasons listed above) and the Independence Bowl (I figure that there will be a number of Louisiana/Arkansas fans upset with me for leaving this one off) for leaving them off the list. I also should apologize to the New Orleans bowl for not promoting them (frankly, I think the SEC would rather have a second bowl game in New Orleans than one in Shreveport).
I recognize that this would be a pretty tough bowl slate, and we might end up with a Big 10/Notre Dame conundrum where our aggressive bowl game slotting leaves us with losing records in the post-season when all things are equal. At the same time, I believe this would create the best possible matchups, allow for some good winter trips (not to mention hitting some good recruiting areas), and make for a hell of an SEC postseason.
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