As a traditionalist, I'm not a big fan of the collegiate post season proliferation and to me, most if not all the prestigious bowl games are still played on New Years Day or a few days after. With the Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and BCS championship yet to be played, the Pac-12's bowl season was done, kaput, with Stanford's heroic defeat yesterday at the Granddaddy. Just one defeat in a big bowl game, is that it?
Where is the respect for a Pac-12 that many experts here on the Internet and in the West Coast mainstream media have recently proclaimed to be the second best football conference behind the SEC..... at least that's what I've been hearing? Second best in football playing athletes, coaching, and I'm sure a few other meaningless things, but not where it truly counts in invitations to NYD or post NYD big bowl games.
Per my count, invitations to the six traditionally biggest bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and BCS) were awarded for the 2013 season by conference as follows: SEC-3; Big12-3; ACC-2; BigTen-2; Pac12-1; AAC-1. Of the five major conferences, the Pac-12 was last in big bowl invitations with just the one and I wonder if Stanford would have been invited had not our conference been locked into the Rose Bowl by contract. Where were 10-win Oregon and ASU when big bowl invitations were sent out? Sucking hind tit behind Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, the two football powers the Pac-12 expansion tried to annex and got Colorado and Utah instead.
The BCS is over after this post-season and can't be used as an excuse for the Pac-12 struggling to keep-up with the four other major conferences when comes time each year for invitations to the big-money bowls. The 4-school NCAA championship playoff will affect the bowl schedule somehow, but the Pac-12 shouldn't count on having a member program finishing the regular season undefeated. That will in future be the only way our conference could edge-out SEC/Big-12/ACC schools plus Notre Dame to be one of the select four.
Where is the respect for a Pac-12 that many experts here on the Internet and in the West Coast mainstream media have recently proclaimed to be the second best football conference behind the SEC..... at least that's what I've been hearing? Second best in football playing athletes, coaching, and I'm sure a few other meaningless things, but not where it truly counts in invitations to NYD or post NYD big bowl games.
Per my count, invitations to the six traditionally biggest bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and BCS) were awarded for the 2013 season by conference as follows: SEC-3; Big12-3; ACC-2; BigTen-2; Pac12-1; AAC-1. Of the five major conferences, the Pac-12 was last in big bowl invitations with just the one and I wonder if Stanford would have been invited had not our conference been locked into the Rose Bowl by contract. Where were 10-win Oregon and ASU when big bowl invitations were sent out? Sucking hind tit behind Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, the two football powers the Pac-12 expansion tried to annex and got Colorado and Utah instead.
The BCS is over after this post-season and can't be used as an excuse for the Pac-12 struggling to keep-up with the four other major conferences when comes time each year for invitations to the big-money bowls. The 4-school NCAA championship playoff will affect the bowl schedule somehow, but the Pac-12 shouldn't count on having a member program finishing the regular season undefeated. That will in future be the only way our conference could edge-out SEC/Big-12/ACC schools plus Notre Dame to be one of the select four.