If There Was Ever a Reason for Better Big East Bowl Tie-Ins

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Posted by DCS

Note to incoming Big East Commissioner John Marinatto: negotiating new and better bowl tie-ins for the conference should be your number one priority. The USF Bulls took the Memphis Tigers behind the wood shed yesterday in the inaugural St. Petersburg Bowl, but you'd hardly know it because not a lot of people really cared.

Greg Auman drives the point point by noting that the St. Pete Bowl was the least attended inaugural bowl since 1997. If you take a look at the list he provides, you'll also see that the International Bowl and Papajohns.com Bowl in 2006 were also lightly attended inaugural bowl season events that involved Big East teams (USF and Cincinnati).

This is simply unacceptable for a BCS conference, let alone, a BCS conference that I feel is of a higher caliber than at least the ACC. I'm not saying that the Big East should never be involved in first time bowls, but the conference can't make a habit out of it. I noted yesterday in my review of the St. Pete Bowl, that the result of the game demonstrates that the Memphis Tigers didn't even belong on the same field as the Bulls. It's embarrassing for a mediocre CUSA team to have to travel several miles to compete in what is essentially a home game for the opposing team; a team that is bigger, faster, stronger, and better coached.

Despite the low attendance to the St. Pete Bowl, organizers felt it was a "great start..." Well, I guess it can't get that much worse going forward.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, let me hook you up with a few links:

Syracuse WR commit Alec Lemon (MD) is still solid with the Orange after the recent coaching change:

“I feel like with a new coaching staff coming in, we can start the program up
again, start all over. From what I heard, we’re supposed to run a spread
no-huddle and that’s good for me.”

at 2:11 PM  

Labels: ,