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Home > Blogs > Springfield, Ohio High School Sports > Archives > 2008 > December > 05 > Entry
Ball State’s bowl situation
I have to say I completely disagree with Yahoo!’s Jason King, who questioned the backbone of Ball State.
King claims the Cardinals won’t receive any respect after declining an invitation to play Boise State in the Humanitarian Bowl.
Here’s why I disagree:
1) Until last season’s appearance in the International Bowl, the Cardinals hadn’t played in a bowl game since 1996. Does it make sense for the Cardinals to play in a bowl game 1,863 miles away from their fans?
2) Brady Hoke made a great decision by waiting to pick a bowl game. Why rush to make a decision to play in Idaho? Another big bowl game may be waiting. Any other year the Cardinals would play in a BCS game.
3) Why should Boise get a home bowl game? I can see the reasoning behind wanting the match-up, but why not play in the GMAC Bowl?
4) The MAC has bowl tie-ins, just like everyone else. According to Wikipedia: “The MAC is contracted to provide a team for three college football bowl games, the GMAC Bowl, Motor City Bowl and International Bowl. In the event that a Big East team cannot be provided for the newly created Papajohns.com Bowl, a fourth MAC team is selected.” Bowl games aren’t about great match-ups. If they were, Utah wouldn’t likely be playing Cincinnati in the Orange Bowl and we’d have a playoff (that’s a discussion for another day). The bowls are about money.
5) Why wouldn’t Ball State want to play Notre Dame? It’s an all-Indiana matchup that would never happen otherwise, and the fans would absolutely love. Who cares what kind of press it brings? The Cardinals would LOVE to knock off the biggest football school in Indiana. It wouldn’t take me long to buy tickets to that game, especially if it were in Detroit at the Motor City Bowl.
Ball State is a great football team, and they’ve had a great season, likely one that could help change the program. It would be great to see them get a chance to knock off some big boys, but they’ll never get the opportunity.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Ball State University, College Football, Graham High School, Mid-American Conference
Comments
By john
December 6, 2008 4:46 AM | Link to this
I guess the Cardinals should have taken care of business against Buffalo if they wanted a shot at the big boys. Thats what they get for looking ahead. Great teams finish.