by Bill Webb
It’s that time of the year again. It’s time for college football teams to forget about what has happened the last 11 weeks and to begin thinking bowl games – if the team was lucky enough, or unfortunate enough, to make it.
Bowl games aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. For instance, Alabama and Baylor met in the Cotton Bowl last season with the Crimson Tide taking a 30-2 whipping to the helpless Bears in an absolute embarrassment to the Southwest Conference as if Baylor winning the title wasn’t enough in the first place. A few years back the Arkansas Razorbacks shocked the Oklahoma Sooners in the Orange Bowl, despite playing without several key players suspended after an incident at the University involving a girls’ dorm. The list could go on and on. But the point is things don’t always go the way they’re planned.
With the addition of the Garden State Bowl and the Hall of Fame Bowl a few years back it would seem there would be plenty of bowl games to go around with almost everyone in the Top 20 in a post-season game of some kind. But no sirree.
With the wild 1981 season comes another bowl game. It’s the Holiday Bowl. So named one would guess as to go along with the time of year or something like that. There is no clear-cut “best bowl game” this year but a couple have to be considered among the top vote getters if indeed any game would be interesting enough to claim the honor. Among the less boring games could be the Sugar Bowl which features Georgia and Pittsburgh. But the game won’t be interesting because of the two teams and their fight for national supremacy. The New Year’s contest will most likely be watchable because of a young man by the name of Herschel Walker. The Bulldog sophomore is probably the most exciting back in the NCAA (yes, that does mean better than Marcus Allen) and alone could make for a good evening of enjoyment.
Obviously the next best game would have to be the Penn State and Southern California matchup in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona.
The Cotton Bowl could very well be another discredit to the Southwest Conference with Texas, the second-best team in the league, hosting a rejuvenated Alabama team. With the so-called “national championship” still within the grasp of the Tide, the Horns may be in for a real treat.
And of course we can’t forget the Razorbacks of the University of Arkansas who will take a trip to Florida again this season, this time taking on North Carolina in the Gator Bowl.
Perhaps the biggest joke of the bowl season is the Garden State Bowl featuring none other than powerhouses Tennessee and Wisconsin. The Peach Bowl may be a perfect replacement for Sleep-eze with West Virginia and Florida squaring off in a battle of two of the most exciting teams in a 200-square mile area of the East Coast.
All and all the bowl season will not be what it has been in the past whatever that might be. It’s getting to where New Years Day is just like another day in the regular season – nothing special.
The list of bowl games and bowl teams this year is about as interesting as the fine print on a toilet tissue wrapper. It seems some bowls are played for no reason other than to add another name to the growing list of post-season encounters.