Smells like trouble
posted by LW, Friday, December 18, 2009
After essentially replacing the Gator Bowl with a date in El Paso, Texas, this is how the ACC presented its new addition:
Though new to the ACC's bowl structure, the Brut Sun Bowl--the nation's fourth-oldest post-season bowl game--is celebrating its 76th year of existence.
When that's the first line on the press release, you know you're in trouble.
You also know something, uh, smells when the third game in your bowl pecking order is sponsored by a cheap aftershave/deodorant.
I repeat: The third game in the bowl pecking order (after the BCS).
That means it's entirely likely that the ACC championship game loser could end up traveling to El Paso. Nashville doesn't sound so bad now, does it?
Anyway, the latest sign of trouble with the ACC's new affiliation comes with El Paso's proximity to the violent Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.
Apparently it's not a fun place. And apparently Oklahoma fans are staying home in droves because of it.
Despite its movie reputation, El Paso — home of the Sun Bowl where the University of Oklahoma will play Stanford on New Year’s Eve — remains one of the safest cities in the United States.
Just last month, one study declared El Paso the second-safest big city in the country, trailing only Honolulu, according to the El Paso Times.
Yet many Sooner fans who annually travel to OU’s bowl games are sitting this one out. And concerns about safety are playing a role.
On a NewsOK.com online poll, almost half of the more than 800 respondents who aren’t going to the Sun Bowl noted their reasoning was they don’t feel safe with all the violence happening across the border from El Paso.
"Juarez has the highest murder rate in the world,” said Edmond resident Craig Blankenship, who has traveled to the last 10 OU bowl games with a group of about 20 family and friends. "We’re not interested in El Paso. We will stay at home and watch it on the tube.”
Blankenship is not alone. Thousands of tickets in the 50,429-seat Sun Bowl Stadium remain unsold, despite a charity drive by the university to have fans purchase tickets for troops stationed at El Paso’s Fort Bliss.
Many of OU’s players share a similar apprehension about how safe they’ll be in El Paso.
"They said there’s something going on across the border right there, that it’s not safe,” senior cornerback Brian Jackson said.
"They should have moved the bowl game. It's the well-being. You've got to think about our well-being first, don't you?"
Well that's just swell. At least the ACC secured an agreement with the Independence Bowl, located in the virtual utopia known as Shreveport.
Come to think of it, it does make sense that a bowl sponsored by a deodorant is located so close to an armpit.
Since we're piling on the ACC, Stewart Mandel says the conference is the worst of the decade.
WORST (BCS) CONFERENCE: The ACC
Not even an expansion to 12 teams and the addition of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College could bolster the traditional basketball power into a relevant football conference. Hurt by the downfall of longtime titans Florida State and Miami, the league lost its first eight BCS bowl appearances prior to Virginia Tech's Orange Bowl win last season. On four occasions, its champion failed to finish in the final AP top 10. And its five-year old conference championship game has been an attendance and TV disaster.
But wait, there's more. Mandel also cites Duke as the worst program of the decade:
The hapless Blue Devils endured three winless seasons (2000, '01 and '06), two one-win seasons (2005 and '07) and two two-win seasons (2002 and '04). They endured ACC losing streaks of 29 (2000-03) and 26 (2005-08) games and were one of only two BCS-conference teams (the other: Baylor) to go the entire decade without reaching a bowl game. The good news is, things are looking up. This season, its second under David Cutcliffe, Duke won its most overall (five) and ACC (three) games since 1994.
Mandel also says the 2001 Miami team was the best single-season team of the decade.
If you watched ESPN's "The U." documentary, you'd have never known. It was a great piece, but the producers really screwed up by throwing Butch Davis under the bus and minimizing the fact that he was able to build a juggernaut in a much more respectable and decent fashion than his predecessors.
In The Post and Courier, Gene Sapakoff gives his eagerly-anticipated bowl predictions and forecasts a victory for the Tigers.
Looks like Vic Koenning is indeed headed to Illinois. We think.
Koenning's replacement at Clemson, the Man of Steele, went on the offensive yesterday in defending his defense and the state of the program under Dabo Swinney.
Steele says this season was a lot like Nick Saban's first year at Alabama, when the Crimson Tide struggled to a 7-6 record while losing to Louisiana-Monroe.
He then predicted Clemson to compile a 25-2 record and compete for a national title over the next two seasons.
Joking about that last sentence. But it's clear he's 100 percent convinced this program is on the right track. It's also clear he thinks people are glossing over the fact that this year's team did something Tommy Bowden was fired (or was going to be fired) for not doing.
A quick ACC basketball update:
N.C. State steals one from Elon. Yeah, you read that right.
N.C. State needed a feisty rally from 11 points down Thursday night to edge Elon 79-76 at the RBC Center.
Or as Sidney Lowe so succinctly put it: "We got away with one today."
Florida State pulled out a close one over Auburn.
The Tigers took 39 3-pointers. Wow.
Travis Sawchik of the P&C wonders if Florida State's football team is on the verge of closing the Atlantic Division window that's been open the last few years.
I doubt the 'Noles are on the verge of returning to their status as a perennial Top 10 power, but you have to think they'll be more formidable simply because the Figurehead In Chief is no longer vacantly standing on the sidelines.
Jimbo Fisher had that offense humming at times this season, and you have to think FSU will be better on that side of the ball next season. Getting the defense shored up could take time, though.
Paul Strelow has the story from C.J. Spiller's graduation, which inspired a rare standing O by the Board of Trustees.
Out of all the 10,000 people in attendance yesterday at Littlejohn Coliseum, I wonder if there was one person who said "Who's C.J. Spiller?" as he walked to the stage.
Doubt it.
Pete Iacobelli of the AP writes about Willy Korn.
And the Greenville News looks at Clemson's hope of ending its three-year bowl losing streak.
When the Tigers defeated Colorado in the 2005 Champs Sports Bowl, who'd have imagined they'd lose their next three?
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
The ACC went to great lengths to spin the addition of the Brut Sun Bowl to its already less-than-sparkling postseason lineup.
After essentially replacing the Gator Bowl with a date in El Paso, Texas, this is how the ACC presented its new addition:
Though new to the ACC's bowl structure, the Brut Sun Bowl--the nation's fourth-oldest post-season bowl game--is celebrating its 76th year of existence.
When that's the first line on the press release, you know you're in trouble.
You also know something, uh, smells when the third game in your bowl pecking order is sponsored by a cheap aftershave/deodorant.
I repeat: The third game in the bowl pecking order (after the BCS).
That means it's entirely likely that the ACC championship game loser could end up traveling to El Paso. Nashville doesn't sound so bad now, does it?
Anyway, the latest sign of trouble with the ACC's new affiliation comes with El Paso's proximity to the violent Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.
Apparently it's not a fun place. And apparently Oklahoma fans are staying home in droves because of it.
Despite its movie reputation, El Paso — home of the Sun Bowl where the University of Oklahoma will play Stanford on New Year’s Eve — remains one of the safest cities in the United States.
Just last month, one study declared El Paso the second-safest big city in the country, trailing only Honolulu, according to the El Paso Times.
Yet many Sooner fans who annually travel to OU’s bowl games are sitting this one out. And concerns about safety are playing a role.
On a NewsOK.com online poll, almost half of the more than 800 respondents who aren’t going to the Sun Bowl noted their reasoning was they don’t feel safe with all the violence happening across the border from El Paso.
"Juarez has the highest murder rate in the world,” said Edmond resident Craig Blankenship, who has traveled to the last 10 OU bowl games with a group of about 20 family and friends. "We’re not interested in El Paso. We will stay at home and watch it on the tube.”
Blankenship is not alone. Thousands of tickets in the 50,429-seat Sun Bowl Stadium remain unsold, despite a charity drive by the university to have fans purchase tickets for troops stationed at El Paso’s Fort Bliss.
Many of OU’s players share a similar apprehension about how safe they’ll be in El Paso.
"They said there’s something going on across the border right there, that it’s not safe,” senior cornerback Brian Jackson said.
"They should have moved the bowl game. It's the well-being. You've got to think about our well-being first, don't you?"
Well that's just swell. At least the ACC secured an agreement with the Independence Bowl, located in the virtual utopia known as Shreveport.
Come to think of it, it does make sense that a bowl sponsored by a deodorant is located so close to an armpit.
Since we're piling on the ACC, Stewart Mandel says the conference is the worst of the decade.
WORST (BCS) CONFERENCE: The ACC
Not even an expansion to 12 teams and the addition of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College could bolster the traditional basketball power into a relevant football conference. Hurt by the downfall of longtime titans Florida State and Miami, the league lost its first eight BCS bowl appearances prior to Virginia Tech's Orange Bowl win last season. On four occasions, its champion failed to finish in the final AP top 10. And its five-year old conference championship game has been an attendance and TV disaster.
But wait, there's more. Mandel also cites Duke as the worst program of the decade:
The hapless Blue Devils endured three winless seasons (2000, '01 and '06), two one-win seasons (2005 and '07) and two two-win seasons (2002 and '04). They endured ACC losing streaks of 29 (2000-03) and 26 (2005-08) games and were one of only two BCS-conference teams (the other: Baylor) to go the entire decade without reaching a bowl game. The good news is, things are looking up. This season, its second under David Cutcliffe, Duke won its most overall (five) and ACC (three) games since 1994.
Mandel also says the 2001 Miami team was the best single-season team of the decade.
If you watched ESPN's "The U." documentary, you'd have never known. It was a great piece, but the producers really screwed up by throwing Butch Davis under the bus and minimizing the fact that he was able to build a juggernaut in a much more respectable and decent fashion than his predecessors.
In The Post and Courier, Gene Sapakoff gives his eagerly-anticipated bowl predictions and forecasts a victory for the Tigers.
Looks like Vic Koenning is indeed headed to Illinois. We think.
Koenning's replacement at Clemson, the Man of Steele, went on the offensive yesterday in defending his defense and the state of the program under Dabo Swinney.
Steele says this season was a lot like Nick Saban's first year at Alabama, when the Crimson Tide struggled to a 7-6 record while losing to Louisiana-Monroe.
He then predicted Clemson to compile a 25-2 record and compete for a national title over the next two seasons.
Joking about that last sentence. But it's clear he's 100 percent convinced this program is on the right track. It's also clear he thinks people are glossing over the fact that this year's team did something Tommy Bowden was fired (or was going to be fired) for not doing.
A quick ACC basketball update:
N.C. State steals one from Elon. Yeah, you read that right.
N.C. State needed a feisty rally from 11 points down Thursday night to edge Elon 79-76 at the RBC Center.
Or as Sidney Lowe so succinctly put it: "We got away with one today."
Florida State pulled out a close one over Auburn.
The Tigers took 39 3-pointers. Wow.
Travis Sawchik of the P&C wonders if Florida State's football team is on the verge of closing the Atlantic Division window that's been open the last few years.
I doubt the 'Noles are on the verge of returning to their status as a perennial Top 10 power, but you have to think they'll be more formidable simply because the Figurehead In Chief is no longer vacantly standing on the sidelines.
Jimbo Fisher had that offense humming at times this season, and you have to think FSU will be better on that side of the ball next season. Getting the defense shored up could take time, though.
Paul Strelow has the story from C.J. Spiller's graduation, which inspired a rare standing O by the Board of Trustees.
Out of all the 10,000 people in attendance yesterday at Littlejohn Coliseum, I wonder if there was one person who said "Who's C.J. Spiller?" as he walked to the stage.
Doubt it.
Pete Iacobelli of the AP writes about Willy Korn.
And the Greenville News looks at Clemson's hope of ending its three-year bowl losing streak.
When the Tigers defeated Colorado in the 2005 Champs Sports Bowl, who'd have imagined they'd lose their next three?
LW
Click here for the "Eye On The Tigers" blog archive.
Link to this entry - Discuss this entry - Return to Blog Home
Donnie Patterson. Donnie Patterson is the founder of Patterson Tax Service, located in Easley, S.C. He has been active in tax preparation since 1970, and offers a full range of tax and bookkeeping services.
Larry Williams. Larry has covered the daily beat at Clemson since 2004. Williams, who worked for the Charleston Post & Courier from 2004-08, joined Tigerillustrated.com in November of 2008. He may be reached by email at ldubya08(at)gmail.com. Replace (at) with @.