[NU Sports] NU football, bowl games, etc.

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

LOVE to come home and see hordes of FOOTBALL posts on this list! I'm getting PSYCHED!!!

As for the topic of the day, lots of things to say ...

* Bowl game in NYC in December: Love it. LOVE IT! Why the whining about a cold-weather bowl. We need MORE of those. This is REAL football weather and may be our best chance to get an SEC team out of its humid, cozy, sweaty home and in our weather for a game! Let's see if Gator gums can still flap in 10 below.

But seriously - NYC is a destination any time of year (certainly more than Boise, Nashville, Jacksonville or El Paso) and no matter what the weather, it's a fantastic idea -- big market, big bowl and weather. TV audiences LOVE the weather (see the NHL winter classic!).

* NU playing in Yankee Stadium: Not so wild about this idea, especially if it would cost us a home game. Like the idea of east coast exposure and developing rivalries out east for recruiting, but not at the expense of a home game. And besides, playing at the "House that 'Roids Built" isn't as big of a deal as Wrigley or Fenway ... and with the wind tunnel there our passes would soar into the stands. The Yankees and their new $tadium and team of bought mercs with needles still sticking out of their arms represent everything that sucks about baseball in the modern era. Why the push to move football games to baseball stadiums (see the NHL winter classic? Guess I had that coming :) ).

* Our new AD's marketing campaign: Can't fault a guy for trying and I love the energy ... but sometimes you can't just throw everything at a wall. LOVE the idea of giving tickets away to scholar students. We have a good team. We have exciting games (more than any stadium in the country over the past decade or so). We HAVE a good product. Do whatever it takes to get people into the stands and we'll start to build a base in the Chicagoland area. But don't move home games to NYC.

* Finally, on the realignment of bowls ... looks like the Alamo ditched us for the Pac 10. Good luck with that, San Antonio. We brought hordes of fans and big games/ratings. I doubt the Pac 10 will bring that. Still, while San Antonio was a wonderful destination, the stadium sort of sucked.

On the plus side, it appears Phoenix is poised to move up in the Big Ten pecking order for the insight bowl. They run a good bowl over in Tempe. We have perfect weather in December here (same golf and old people as Florida, minus the humidity), the Insight is a bowl on the rise and it should be a good matchup with the Big XII outside of their home turf.

Hopefully the league uses this annual shakeup to keep doing what we did right with bowls (big $$$ and destinations) while eliminating some of the bad (too many road matchups and uneven "Big Ten #6 vs. Pac 10 #3 or so" matchups).

Well, that's a lot to digest. So great to have college football BACK!
GO CATS!!!
-SjT

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STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!