Idiots Write About Sports

Commenting on the likelihood of Cal appearing in the Las Vegas Bowl — made ever more likely by Stanford’s sliding-glass-door defense against Notre Dame — in this thread, reader Larry Renolds asks:

The big issue is why does the Pac10 get to play all these losers in our bowl games? I guess this is the price for being on FSN.

This is probably a better question for Jason to handle, since I’ve personally witnessed his angry diatribe about the Pac-10’s bowl commitments, but this has nothing to do with Fox Sports Net, Larry. It has every thing to do with poor leadership on the part of the Pac-10.
Consider for a moment the bowl commitments of the other conferences whose champions get automatic berths in the four BCS games.
• The runner-up in the SEC gets to go to the Capital Bowl Game in Orlando on New Year’s Day.
• So does the Big 10 runner up.
• The Big 12 runner-up plays in the Cotton Bowl on January 1.
• The ACC runner-up makes do with the New Year’s Day Gator Bowl.
• In theory, the Big East runner-up winds up in the Gator Bowl, too, unless Notre Dame gets that spot. If that’s the case, the Big East No. 2 team likely winds up in what is now called the Meineke Car Bowl, played in Charlotte, N.C., on New Year’s Eve.
So where does the No. 2 Pac-10 team wind up? Assuming they don’t qualify for one of the at-large berth in the BCS games, the runner-up is assured a place in the Holiday Bowl, played a full three days before the marquee games on New Year’s Day. The opponent? The third-place Big 12 team.
Look, I got nothing against the Holiday Bowl. San Diego’s a good a place as any to spend late December. It’s just not exactly the most glamorous locale for the second-place team in one of the country’s elite conferences. And the blame for that has to fall on the conference commissioners who negotiated the Pac-10’s bowl game commitments in the first place.
So the Pac-10 has two choices: either negotiate a better deal with a more prestigious bowl game or create an entirely new game to feature its runner-up. That second option is probably the more likely one when you consider that, of the New Year’s Day Games, only two are played west of the Mississippi. The Fiesta Bowl is already spoken for, BCS-wise, and the Cotton Bowl has both the Big 12 runner-up and an SEC team.
So why not create your own bowl game for either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day? Hold it in Los Angeles or San Francisco or some other West Coast City. Invite a No. 2 or No. 3 team from one of the power conferences or even the Mountain West champ. It may sound like a minor thing, but the Fiesta Bowl had some pretty humble origins, and it’s done pretty well for itself recently.