Outback Bowl Bound

Outback Bowl here we come. I know that I'm being a little presumptive on where we are going to be playing come January (that's right, I said January), but there is a reason for my madness. At the beginning of this year, no one would have expected the Big Ten to finish with a three way tie, more-so with that three way tie including Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State. This was suppose to be the year of the show down between Iowa and Ohio State, but with Iowa finishing with a 7-5 record, that has long since been history.

Taking a closer look at bowl match-ups, the top three of the Big Ten picture become a little more clear after the most recent BCS standings. Since there is a three way tie at the top of the Big Ten, the BCS rankings serve as the tie breaker, leaving the top ranked team with the automatic BCS bid for the Big Ten. So from the looks of the most recent standings, Wisconsin looks bound for the Rose Bowl (barring any major upsets, an outside shot at the National Title Game) and Ohio State seems ready to lock up an at-large bid for one of the remaining BCS Bowls, most likely the Sugar or the Fiesta. If that scenario plays out, that would leave Michigan State as the clear cut favorite to face Alabama (not LSU because they will enjoying the confines of Cowboys stadium and the Cotton Bowl) in the Capital One Bowl. Now that we've got that out of the way, we can start focusing on the logjam of contention for the Outback Bowl.

I know a lot of you have been reading the tie-ins and bowl predictions for all of the bowl games recently, and most of them say the Outback Bowl goes to the 3rd place team in the Big Ten. Keeping that in mind, there is a three way tie for first in the Big Ten, which coincidentally has left a three way tie for fourth. Considering we're losing two teams to the BCS, and MSU to the Capital One Bowl, consider it a three way tie for third, and the representative that is going to be playing in the Outback Bowl on January 1st, 2011.

Now that three way tie consists of Penn State, Iowa, and Illinois, which leaves the Outback bowl committee to pick between us, the Hawkeyes, and the Illini. There is a reason why I mentioned the teams twice, because the major focus on this three way tie is a committee, not an installed tie-breaker that can separate these teams that would automatically send one of these teams to the Outback Bowl. This committee basically gets to choose who they want, and their criteria is sometimes weighted by win and losses, but in this situation none of that matters, since all three have identical Big Ten records.

So the first tiebreaker for the committee is going to be which one of these teams is going to create the most revenue. What this breaks down too, is which team has a better traveling fan base, which team's alumni are going to come to the game and make them some money. With that in mind, Iowa played in the Orange Bowl last year, and they were very well represented in Florida (Outback Bowl is played in Tampa) in terms of fan base, Illinois does not have a proven track record of a traveling fan base, and Penn State is by and far the most reputable program out of these three in showing up for road games. Based on that alone, the Outback Bowl committee has already limited their choices between the Nittany Lions and the Hawkeyes.

Now you are thinking to yourself that the Hawkeyes have the advantage because they beat the Nittany Lions in head to head competition this year, but the truth is that none of that matters to the committee. Their next criteria that they are going to use to pick a team for this game is how they played down the final stretch of the season. Based on this they are going to determine which team would be a more exciting draw for fans to come out and watch (basically use this as an excuse to pick who they really want, the team that is going to make them the most money). Politically speaking they are going to compare the records of Penn State and Iowa during their last six games of the season, and more closely examine how they ended the season. As for Iowa, they went 2-4 (almost 1-5 is Belcher didn't drop that last second TD grab for Indiana) down the stretch with a season ending loss to the worst team in the Big Ten in Minnesota. Penn State on the other hand, went 4-2, with those two losses coming against two teams ranked in the top ten of the BCS standings, including a close match-up against Michigan State.

Basically what I'm saying is that nobody wants to go watch and Iowa team that just lost to Minnesota to end off the season, while Penn State fans will always want to go watch their team no matter who they are facing. The Lions will also get a little more grace considering the fact that they had the toughest schedule in the nation this year. But all reasoning and theories aside, the Nittany

WE ARE..................