Chips off the old block
I guess I'll see this classic on ESPN Classic next week after missing all of it because I ended up seeing Cabaret on Broadway (a true "Remember the '80s" flashback with Molly Ringwald and Neil Patrick Harris starring), although it was nice of the NJ Transit conductor to tell us the score as the game ended. What that game did, though, is put me at 1-6 in picking Big Ten bowl games in my main football pool, and given their stellar record this time around, shows exactly how off I was. Damn me for living in the South and having all those SEC people say their conference is the best. At cheating, maybe.

I'm surprised the Big Ten did so well, although most of the teams were glad to be in their bowl games while most of their opponents, save Miami in the title game, necessarily weren't (read Arkansas, Colorado, Florida).

By the way, am I the only who thinks the spreading out of the BCS bowls is a bad idea. New Year's Day used to be all about the bowl games, especially some of the long-standing traditional ones like the Rose and Cotton. The Jan. 2 national title game was fine to make it more distinctive -- a capper to all the bowl games.

Now, the Jan. 3 or even Jan. 4 game is just tiresome -- people are back at work, the rush of all the bowl games is over, you want to have a life other than college football. The Jan. 2 game is even more meaningless since it's just a placeholder game for the most part to spread things out. You know the other bowl games don't mean squat, but at least they're all part of the fabric of "bowl week." Other than seeing the battle of the Heisman Trophy vote-getters, what was the real appeal of USC-Iowa the day between all the bowls and the national title game in the grand scheme of things? I missed most of that game too since I had other plans (after keeping most of New Year's Day open to watch the bowl games).