As I predicted, Ole Miss will be going to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. There was some hope we would go to the Capital One Bowl, which is a slightly better bowl (and easier this year), but I always thought it was unfounded optimism. Our opponent will be No. 8 Texas Tech, who was, at one time, No. 2 in the country and thought to be headed for the national championship game. They will certainly be the favorite, but I think we have a good shot at an upset. The team seems to be very confident and that counts for a lot. Despite not playing this week, Ole Miss moved up two spots in the AP poll to No. 20, and moved into the BCS poll at No. 25.
No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Florida played for the SEC championship this past Saturday in Atlanta. Florida beat them 31-20. Oklahoma beat Missouri 62-21 in the Big 12 championship. Florida and Oklahoma will now face each other in Miami for the national championship. I’ll be pulling for Florida, but it should be a good game. I think the BCS guys got it right by picking Florida and Oklahoma, even though Texas beat Oklahoma and has the same record as them. But, we’ll never really know for sure. Too bad we don’t have a playoff.
Incidentally, some guys at ESPN put some thought into how this season would end up if college football had an eight team playoff to decide the national champion. It sounds good to me. Also, here’s a list of all bowl games.
Tommy Tuberville, a former Ole Miss coach, resigned from Auburn last week. Something’s a little fishy though, as the school will be paying him his $5 million buyout, even though he wasn’t “fired.” Auburn’s athletic director said it was “the right thing to do.” Really? You couldn’t find anything better to do with $5 million? This has led some to speculate that Tuberville was actually fired. His mom says he was. If he was, Auburn made a dumb move. Tuberville is a good coach. Houston Nutt doesn’t care. He and his assistant coaches got a raise out of the deal.
Football news should be slow for a few weeks until some decent bowls get going. Go ahead, celebrate, James.
I’m still waiting to ignore your post on the Cotton Bowl.
I see you ignored this post all the way down to the last paragraph. :)