Also, that was being optimistic. Missouri getting into the Insight Bowl rests on two Big 12 teams getting BCS games. Missouri may wind up in the Holiday Bowl. The effing HOLIDAY BOWL.

Thanks for the correction. I forget about the Big Least for a reason.

And you're right: the Big 12 won't get two bids and they don't deserve it.

As much as it will suck seeing Missouri get dumped to a crappy bowl, we (Missouri fans) have no one to blame but ourselves.  In general, the fans haven't traveled well for bowl games.  If you don't sell tickets, you aren't particularly attractive to the bowl committee, regardless of how good the team is.

forsberg_us wrote:

As much as it will suck seeing Missouri get dumped to a crappy bowl, we (Missouri fans) have no one to blame but ourselves.  In general, the fans haven't traveled well for bowl games.  If you don't sell tickets, you aren't particularly attractive to the bowl committee, regardless of how good the team is.

Bizarre.  I never thought of it that way.  I've always thought that Arkansas fans, including my cousin who lives in Atlanta, were nuts to travel all over the country to watch the Razorbacks get their asses kicked in a bowl game or NCAA tournament.

I've only been to one bowl game myself and not to any NCAA tournament games.  The one time I went to a bowl game was about 20 years ago when the Razorbacks lost in the Liberty Bowl to a Georgia team that it seemed to me they should have beaten.  A friend of mine from Little Rock had bought two tickets and his wife, who is now an ex-wife, had the good sense not come over here for it.  So I agreed to go and spent the night being colder than I was loading ships on a New Jersey pier in sub-zero weather.  Not only that, but they had a fabulous Ray Stevens half time with show lots of similar entertainment in a supporting role.  I never dreamed that I could miss the marching bands so much.

Last edited by Mags (11/29/2010 2:25 pm)

OK.  Which one of us has been ghostwriting for Jeff Gordon . . . or which one of IS Jeff Gordon:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/jeff-gordon/article_c936a5fa-fc90-11df-aa0f-0017a4a78c22.html

Mags wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

As much as it will suck seeing Missouri get dumped to a crappy bowl, we (Missouri fans) have no one to blame but ourselves.  In general, the fans haven't traveled well for bowl games.  If you don't sell tickets, you aren't particularly attractive to the bowl committee, regardless of how good the team is.

Bizarre.  I never thought of it that way.  I've always thought that Arkansas fans, including my cousin who lives in Atlanta, were nuts to travel all over the country to watch the Razorbacks get their asses kicked in a bowl game or NCAA tournament.

I've only been to one bowl game myself and not to any NCAA tournament games.  The one time I went to a bowl game was about 20 years ago when the Razorbacks lost in the Liberty Bowl to a Georgia team that it seemed to me they should have beaten.  A friend of mine from Little Rock had bought two tickets and his wife, who is now an ex-wife, had the good sense not come over here for it.  So I agreed to go and spent the night being colder than I was loading ships on a New Jersey pier in sub-zero weather.  Not only that, but they had a fabulous Ray Stevens half time with show lots of similar entertainment in a supporting role.  I never dreamed that I could miss the marching bands so much.

Admittedly I'm one of the fans who doesn't travel to bowl games either.  I gave pretty serious thought to going to the Cotton Bowl in 2007 and actually looked at prices for the Texas Bowl last year (glad I decided to stay home), but have never been.  I won't go this year either.  But given that Missouri only sold 6,000 of its 11,000 ticket allotment to the Alamo Bowl a couple of years ago, it isn't that surprising that the bowl organizers aren't lining up at the door.  Missouri isn't anywhere near privileged enough for its fans to say "we'll come, but only if you give us a really good bowl game."

forsberg_us wrote:

What this whole discussion highlights is the stupidity of the current bowl system.  Missouri fans didn't have any problem traveling to Buffalo last season for the first 2 rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament or to Glendale for the Regional Finals the year before.  If there was an incentive for attending (i.e., watching your team advance to the next round), fans would attend.  I remember that Missouri beat Memphis (sorry Mags) before losing to Connecticut 2 years ago in the basketball tournament.  Without looking it up, I don't have a clue who the football team played in the Alamo Bowl 2 years ago.

This stuff seems so remote to me. I've seen the Cardinals play in all four time zones, but I've never even thought of going to a bowl game longer than two seconds (the one time the idea flashed in front of me was when ASU played Hawaii in the Aloha Bowl a few years ago, but the thought of traveling halfway across the world to see a 6-5 team take on a 7-4 team for the right to crack the "others receiving votes" column in the final AP poll wasn't enticing enough).
The one thing I want to do before too much longer is take my son to a big time college football game. He's seen a Harvard game, but I want him to get an idea of how the rest of country outside our little cocoon considers college football. Baton Rouge seems like one of the most likely places, but I'm not sure my son is going to be ready for that level of intensity until he's about 25. I'm not even sure I'm ready for that level of intensity.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (11/30/2010 12:42 pm)

tkihshbt wrote:

Lots of good stuff in this thread.

If your son likes basketball, he would probably have a better time at a college game than football.

He likes to play just about any sport, except baseball. And he won't watch baseball. A couple of years ago, a parent of one of the kids I was coaching at the time gave me his tickets to a Red Sox/A's game. The seats were in the third row on the third base side, directly behind the visitors' on-deck circle. When a lefty hitter was at the plate, you couldn't take your eyes off him because you might get a foul ball in your ear. Best seats I've ever had. My son was about 7 at the time, and after about the third inning, he turned to me and said something like "How much longer do we have to stay? ..."

tkihshbt wrote:

If that happened to me, I'd know how those dads in Alabama feel when their sons want to take up ballet instead of play football.

It's not that bad. He plays three sports, he just doesn't like to watch them. For some reason, in the past few weeks he's taken to rooting for the Saints. The first time he sat and watched an entire football game on TV was on Thanksgiving.

Bradford is fine for some kids.  Bobby has chosen James Laurenitis as his favorite player.  He was pretty disappointed when his team decided to keep last year's jerseys.  He was pretty set on picking 55 this season.  Although playing d-end, 72 wouldn't be a bad option either.

I was just messing around. Brees is a good one to follow. I just enjoy trying to push Bradford on people.

Agreed on Ray Lewis. I can't even begin to understand why he isn't more hated.

He's certainly on the short list of the greatest middle linebackers ever, but I'll never buy the sagacious veteran act that the NFL is trying to foist upon its fan base these days.

For marketing purposes only. They need material for those Steve Sabol films.

Someone once had a funny line about Ray Lewis jumping into a dog pile four seconds after the whistle then acting like a maniac.