Matchup: Missouri vs North Carolina. Missouri underachieved against one of the toughest schedules in college football in its final year before heading to the SEC. North Carolina spent another year under water because of its NCAA issues, but made it to a bowl game anyway. This should probably have North Carolina scared to death since the NCAA Sword of Damocles is about to come down on them and its possible the infractions committee will view none of the punishments so far as worthy since there have been no scholarship cuts and the team has somehow made a bowl the last two seasons.
Matchup Pedigree: Missouri spent much of its existence as cannon fodder for Nebraska and Oklahoma in the Big 8. That continued with Texas joining the fun once the Big 12 was formed. Then Missouri got good and things have been rolling along quite nicely since 2005. North Carolina is one of the most underachieving programs in the country. It never wins the ACC despite having a recruiting base that should have enough talent to do it. For that matter, it never even contends (last time a legit contender late in the season, Mack Brown was the head coach) and it makes no sense.
Locale: The King of all Bowl Game Failure. Whose idea was it to play a bowl game in Shreveport. Its a city with all of the bad a none of the good of so many places. It's close to Texas and Arkansas, but has none of the benefits of being in either of those two states (not that there's much benefit to living in Arkansas...). It's in Louisiana, but it has no Cajuns to make life interesting. It's in the South where the weather is normally decent, but Shreveport is about the coldest place in the South this time of year (remember the Mississippi St.-Texas A&M blizzard bowl game a few years back? It was played here).
In addition to the citywide failure, the stadium is a dilapidated eyesore that is falling apart as well. Everything is so bad here that live Falcon for Air Force flew out of the stadium and ran away last year (he was found lost in Shreveport).
Entertainment Value: Decent. The quality of play should be good, but these teams are inconsistent and both can turn the defensive pressure up. This could turn into a slugfest.
Corporate Nonsense: I actually had to look up what Advocare V100 was to even write this (its a multi-vitamin). Of course that's not even that bad compared to all of the other nonsense that has sponsored this game over the years. Among those are PetroSun (product supplier to oil and gas companies), Sanford (writing product company responsible for the Sharpie among others) and the immortal Poulan-Weedeater (aka the corporate sponsor that pushed everything over the edge and showed any old thing could do it. Since then we have gotten Roady's Truck Stops, Beef O Brady's, Diamond Walnuts, Belk, San Diego County Credit Union, Godaddy.com, and uDrove as awful sponsors giving me tons of material for this section). Given we owe the Independence Bowl a debt of gratitude for giving us the first in such a long line of bad bowl game sponsors and names (thanks Poulan-Weedeater), there wil be no intentional comedy in this section... until the next bowl tomorrow.
Bowl Pedigree: Pathetic. This bowl was also the starter of another bad tradition: putting a bowl game in a crappy locale matching awful teams. Thanks to the success of this game (I don't know how), we now have games in places like Boise and Detroit, where nobody wants to go most of the year but certainly nobody wants to go in the winter. Oh, and the game usually match middling 7-5 BCS conference teams that bore us to tears.
Game Prediction: North Carolina's interim coach is leaving for Ohio St. Missouri's coach is staying. Considering that I believe that means more motivation for Missouri and Missouri has a better team, Missouri will win behind its defense and the passing of James Franklin.
Missouri 24, North Carolina 14
Should you watch: Heck no. Mid-afternoon on the day after Christmas in the worst locale of the bowl season with an awful sponsor, a terrible matchup of middling BCS teams and no snow to make it watchable means do the right thing. Spend the day with friends or family and if you must have a football fix, watch Monday Night Football later tonight.
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