Note: Everyone welcome Paul Schmidt, a long-time member of the Journal sports staff who currently still strings for us occasionally while living in Wrigleyville. Ideally, we were hoping for him to make his first post(s) during the Cubs’ playoff run, but, well … Anyway, this is his first post. Welcome, Paul!
Kirk Herbstreit and Brent “Mushmouth” Musberger seem to disagree (unless Illinois goes to the Sugar Bowl — EEK bad memories bad memories), but things are shaping up for my alma mater, Illinois, to be a BCS team.
Read that last sentence one more time.
Illinois could be a BCS bowl team.
We’re less than 24 hours away from that distinct possibility. It looks like Illinois will pass both Tennessee and BC (who lost today), with OU, Arizona State, Va Tech and LSU recording victories. Of those teams, it would seem the only one Illinois could have passed MIGHT have been Oklahoma. So really, that’s a moot point.
Which leaves questions of how things work … there’s the order the bowls pick in, but something I know I had forgotten about is that if your BCS bowl’s representative gets stolen, you immediately get the first pick to replace them.
So it would certainly appear that, with tOSU headed back to the title game, the Rose Bowl will get the first pick (which isn’t good for Illinois). That’s when things get dicey…
Who else goes to the title game?? Is it Georgia, who couldn’t even make the SEC title game? Is it Va. Tech? Is it LSU? Is it Brent Musberger’s ridiculous selection, Hawai’i? I honestly don’t know, and it’s the whim of the voters to decide, but this is how I would slate it:
National Title game — Ohio St. vs. Virginia Tech
Orange Bowl — West Virginia vs. Georgia
Rose Bowl — USC vs. LSU
Fiesta Bowl — Kansas vs. Oklahoma
Sugar Bowl — Illinois vs. Hawai’i (a game that roughly 5 people travel to see).
The reason that is, is because, with the exception of bowls who get their natural representative picked out, in this case the Orange and the Rose, the Sugar Bowl picks dead last. The Orange, which automatically gets WVU, would probably take the BCS #3 team, likely to be Georgia. That gives the Rose the next pick (after OSU goes to the title game), and who are they going to pick, a team like LSU or Illinois to keep the Big Ten/Pac-10 rivalry alive? (if you don’t know the answer to that question, really, just stop reading and turn the computer off). Fiesta seems to love Kansas, and they don’t seem to mind that they would play OU, so that seems totally likely.
The question becomes the Sugar Bowl, and who they pick. They have to have Hawai’i, who would be the consensus last pick. The question becomes, who is the other team? It comes down to Arizona St and Illinois. The one thing going in Illinois’ favor is that they travelled EXTREMELY well to New Orleans in 2002, and Arizona St. is a notoriously bad travelling team.
Maybe I’m looking at things through Rose (or Sugar?) colored glasses, but I think this seems highly likely.
