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Saturday December 12th, 2009
2:22pmAgs To Shreveport
It was announced officially last Sunday that the Ags will be playing Georgia in the Independence Bowl.This is the bowl matchup that I was most excited about being possible after sitting down and looking at all of the realistic the options. Everyone has a handful of teams, beside THEIR school, that they root for....Georgia is one of mine (along with Nebraska, 'Bama, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame - pre-and-post Clausen).
Honestly, without looking at opponents, I'd rather us play in the Texas Bowl for a few reasons. I don't really think the prestige factor between the Texas Bowl and the Independence Bowl is much different....I live in Houston....and I've really tried hard, for years, to minimize the amount of time I've spent in the state of Louisiana.
The only way I was going to go to the Independence Bowl was is if we were matched up with Georgia. I kept hearing that Kentucky or Tennessee would go....and I would have watched it on ESPN2....after DVRing it. A 4pm Monday afternoon game is about the crummiest day and time we could have asked for....but it could have been worse....we could have been playing Kentucky.
It is, however, the only bowl played that day so even with the bad kickoff time, it will get some run nationally.
Even though I liked the conviencience of the Texas Bowl, I wasn't all that trilled with the possibility of a matchup against Navy in the Texas Bowl. First of all, I don't like that we would have to spend so much time focusing on stopping the triple-option, which is so different from anything we've seen so far in this era of the spread offense. Secondly, win or lose, I don't see how I could walk away from that game excited about next year. The risk-reward against Georgia is much higher. If we beat Navy, how many of you would be excited? If we lost to Navy....I don't even want to think about the meltdown. If we beat Georgia, even a down Georgia, that is HUGE for our program which needs a boost to keep us on the upswing. If we lose to Georgia, at least it was UGA. It gives us one more measuring point to where we need to get to. I can swallow that pill a heckuva lot easier.
One other thing about the Independence Bowl was how nice the ticket prices were. Can you imagine that the cheapest ticket of the season would be the $35 bowl ticket....that is until Bill Byrne got his hands on it and added a TWENTY DOLLAR processing fee to order through our Athletic Department. That's almost a 60% markup....for a fee. A fee. Torbush WOW!
I'm going to start working on a Georgia preview so watch for that in a a week or so.
12:42pmA Glimpse at the Heisman
The Heisman Award Ceremony is tonight and I tried to explain to Jennifer last night how crazy this year has been. I think she only heard "white guy from Stanford....Nebraska...." but there was a lot more in there.Going into this teason the three highest vote getters from 2008 were returning, two of those guys already have one Heisman on their mantle (Tim Tebow in '07 & Sam Bradford in '08). I've been conviced the entire season that Cart McCoy of texas was going to win it because he got left out last year, he plays for texas, and he'll end up getting it as a sort of lifetime achievement award.
So Tebow, Bradford, and Cart are the three, and only, legitimate candidates back in August. Bradford plays about 30 snaps on the season after injuring and then re-injuring his shoulder. Tebow had a good season but it wasn't as good as either his sophomore or junior seasons. Cart has a very good year and his horns are going to be playing for the National Championship, although I thought he really hurt himself in the Big 12 Championship - as weak as the longhorns schedule was this year it doesn't help that his three worst performances were against the only three ranked teams he played (OU, oSu, and Nebraska - averaging fewer than 175 yards passing in those contests).
I'd also like to point out that the Heisman has gone to a QB 8 times in the last 9 seasons with mega-superstar Reggie Bush being the trend-bucker. Also, of those last 9 years, the winner has been slated to play in the National Championship ('02 Carson Palmer was the only one who didn't).
BUT....
We have had some crazy wildcards enter the mix starting with Alabama's sophomore RB, Mark Ingram, who like Cart has had a very good season and has led his traditional power program back to the National Championship.
The next candidate is the running back from Stanford (the white guy), Toby Gerhart, who I believe is the best offensive player in the country. Unrelated to the football field, but still making for a good story, is the fact that he is taking 18 hours this semester (in a real major), and plays for Stanford's legendary baseball team in the spring. I watched 3 or 4 of his games this year and was really impressed with his running....he runs so hard and so powerfully, it is just something we don't see anymore with all of these finesse spread offenses. He was the most consistant offensive player of the bunch and his biggest games of the year came in his final four games against USC, Oregon, Cal, and Notre Dame (13 TDs, 742 yards and an average of 6.4 ypc in those games) The biggest problem is that he plays for a 8-4 team at Stanford.
The third wildcard is the most interesting. Ndamukong Suh is a defensive tackle for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and is the best defensive player in the country - and in my opinion is the best overall player. He is the first defensive player to be invited to New York since 1997, when Charles Woodson was the first/only defensive player to win the award. Suh won every defensive award he was eligible for - the Outland Trophy (outstanding interior lineman), Lombardi Award (outstanding lineman - offensive or defensive), Bednarik Award (defensive player of the year), Nagurski Award (defensive player of the year) - and probably could have earned some consideration for the Thorpe Award - the most outstanding defensive back. ;)
Ninety-five percent of the country didn't even know his name until the Big 12 Championship game where he completely and wholly dominated Cart McCoy and the longhorn's powerful offense. He had 26 yards of tackles for a loss....only 10 yards fewer than the games leading rusher had.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this one plays out. I think that Ingram will probably win it but I think the vote is going to come down to being one of the closest in history - particularly between the top 3 finishers....and I think the top three finishers will all be names we didn't know in August.