Running 2011 Bowl Season Thread- Match-ups on Page 1

This.

 

If you want to see a team that got royally screwed (or screwed themselves) in the bowl-selection process, I offer the Southern Miss Golden Eagles.

For 15 years, the champion of Conference USA has gone to the Liberty Bowl (hold the jokes, please), but the year USM wins the conference with its best team in a dozen seasons, the Liberty Bowl chooses to push it out in favor of a craptastic SEC-Big East matchup between Vandy and Cincinnati.

Supposedly, Southern was offered its choice of any bowl with C-USA ties and they chose ... the Hawaii Bowl? Not only will very few of their fans be able to attend, but the payout is only $750K, as opposed to the $1.some mil they'd get in the bowl at Dallas. They'll be lucky to break even on Hawaii. And they're playing 7-5 Nevada, which isn't the same as playing, say, Penn State in Dallas.

Now, the conspiracy theoristas think this was the conference sticking it to USM for supposedly costing the league $17M that Houston would have gotten from a BCS bowl bid. My personal feeling, though, is it was Larry Fedora and his wife squeezing an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii out of USM before they move on to greener pastures. Fedora's wife has never been happy in Hattiesburg, especially when he was getting reamed by fans when things weren't going well. I think this bowl trip was her personal f--- you to USM and Hattiesburg on the way out of town.

 

Another way to look at it is that it's a much better reward for the players than going to Dallas or Birmingham. I'm guessing there aren't a whole lot of kids on that roster who have been outside the continental US.

 

Wait a minute, is someone bitching about having to go to Honolulu instead of Dallas in December?

 

Southern Miss's spin

http://www.southernmiss.com/genrel/120411aaa.html

 

It's sort of like pulling out Pedophile State.

Yeah, some are 8.

 

I still don't get why some people (media, fans, whatever) are still acting like the Sugar Bowl is going to be a terrible, unwatchable game. Sure, the selection of the two teams (or even just VT) was pretty pathetic. But shit, I think this is going to be a damn entertaining game. Denard Robinson is always entertaining, and I think the VT stars (Thomas and Wilson) will also bring some star power, despite being far less known than Robinson. And the defenses have to be ranked pretty high nationally, too. Both of them. First meeting between the two schools.

I just don't get it. Bash the selection. But the game itself could be really good.

 

But you HAVE to bash the game. That's how you prove you hate the BCS more than the next guy...

 

For Southern Miss fans, it's all about perception and respect (or lack thereof). They want to measure their team against teams from BCS AQ leagues, not the third-place team from the WAC.

Of course, the money is a legitimate concern. The half-mil extra they would have gotten from any of their other bowl options would come in handy for a program with Southern's relatively small budget.

Another gripe is their inability to attend the game. Only a handful of USM fans can afford to fly to Hawaii for a bowl game. There is also the fact that almost no one outside of the two schools' fans will watch the game on TV, which plays into the feeling of disrespect being felt by the fans.

The bottom line is Southern Miss fans feel like the decision to go to Hawaii was a selfish one made by an out-going coach and an athletic director they've come to despise to what they see as the detriment of the program. It may not be completely rational, but I can tell you that they seriously pissed off about it.

Of course, if the Golden Eagles had taken care of business against Marshall and UAB, as they should have, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

I agree.

 

Actually, when I saw the list of bowl games, my thought was, why couldn't they find a way to match up Southern Miss with Boise State or TCU? Send Arizona State to Hawaii, and let Southern Miss take on another top-25 team from a non-AQ conference.