Bowl Season

Conference Strength: the theme of the 2008 bowl season.
Not only is regional pride involved, but perceived conference strength more than ever decides who goes to the National Championship game. This year is a perfect example of that trend. With seven one loss BCS teams, only four had a chance to go to the one game playoffs
when the Big XII and SEC championship games were being played. At this point both Penn St. and USC had been relegated to the Rose Bowl because they had weak conferences. Texas Tech took a third row back seat to the more traditional Big XII south powers of Oklahoma and Texas. And Alabama and Florida held the rare position of determining their own fate. In this day and age conference paradigms topple quickly, but generally take a while to build.
That being said all conferences have something big to prove this year:

We will start with the Big Eleven: This conference is battling not only against the opinion that it is weak, it is fighting against the overwhelming statistics to back that claim up. The last four BCS games for the Big Ten have been blowouts, two at the hands of the mighty Trojans in the Rose bowl and of course Ohio St.'s debacles against SEC foes in the last two national championship games. From top to bottom they have not been much better; last season the conference bowl record was 2-7. With the decline of Michigan and Wisconsin, other teams have stepped up to fill the void at the top of the Big Ten, most notably Penn State and Michigan State, but it remains to be seen if the new class can win. To make matters worse this years bowl schedule is daunting, two more brutal BCS match ups for Ohio State and Penn State loom against Texas and USC,
the next top two teams get tough SEC foes Georgia and South Carolina. Minnesota and Northwestern will stand against the Big XII offensive powers of Kansas and Missouri respectively. The conferences first game will pit a struggling Wisconsin against an improving and young Florida St.

Big East: Ever since Virginia Tech and Miami set sail for the ACC this conference has been praying for a team to establish themselves as a national powerhouse. West Virginia has come very close to achieving that mark, but now they Rich-less. This conference will most likely come out of the bowl season with an impressive record and a BCS game win, and will most likely once again be stuck with the "mediocre" tag in 2009.Although this conference is not the SEC or Big XII, they deserve more credit from top to second bottom, Syracuse gets no credit, than they have received in recent years. Unfortunately the Big East will not be viewed as a major conference until they have a titan establish themselves, and looking at the current situations who knows when that will be?

Pac-10: Other than USC the conference has no true threats. A very general and very true statement for the Pac-10 of late. While USC goes to a seventh straight BCS bowl game, the rest of the conference fights for the right for second place and the Holiday bowl against the Big XII three. This conference, except for Washington, seems however to be on the rise. This year only five teams made a bowl, and each team has a legitimate chance to win their bowl game. With a few big wins this conference can establish what the big east has: a competitive second-tier of teams.

ACC. The major question for the ACC is parity or weakness? Ten of the twelve teams from this conference made a bowl, six of those teams had 4-4 conference records and the other four, including the champion Virginia Tech, had 5-3 conference records. A good bowl season means the ACC was strong and evenly matched. A poor bowl season means the ACC was simply bad, and lacked teams that could establish dominance. No conference has more to prove than the ACC this year. The good news for the ACC is that a round of late non-conference games against the SEC went to the ACC, including wins for Clemson and Georgia Tech over South Carolina and Georgia.

Big XII. It's not a bad thing when your conference only has to prove they really are that good. This year the Big XII south was most likely the strongest sub-conference in the history of college football, and they were strong because of amazing quarterback play. The question comes down to this:were the bad defensive stats due to bad defense or really good offense? After watching Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech, Nebraska, Kansas, Missourri and Oklohoma State dominate the opposing defenses with the spread I have to say that the Big XII is posed to have a great bowl season and back up the claims that they have overtaken the SEC as the strongest conference in the nation with our without defense.

SEC. Go Defense. The SEC will try to prove that they are still top dogs, and that they are because of fast, hard hitting defenses. Luckily for college football fans the BCS National Championship game will give us a Oklahoma and Florida for direct comparison, but if the Longhorns have learned anything from head to head matchups it is that they don't always do enough to change minds. Look for the SEC defenses to make them competitive, and usually favorites in every single bowl game this year.

Some Bowl Numbers:

34: The number of bowl games to conclude the 2008 football season.

57%: The percentage of bowl subdivision teams that are invited to a bowl.

10: Number of bowl games whose title is simply the name of the company sponsoring the bowl.

8: Number of bowl games who are named after the location of the bowl.

0: Number of bowls that do not have the sponsor's name in the official title.

9: Number of bowl teams that do not have winning records.

16: Number of BCS conference schools that do not have winning conference records.

1: Number of BCS conference schools that have the worst possible conference schedule: 2-6, Kentucky.

83.3333333 Repeating, of Course%: Percentage of ACC schools that made a bowl. Duke and Virginia were the only teams out of twelve that did not make a bowl.

1. Number of BCS conference schools that have undefeated regular season conference schedules: Alabama.

11. Number of teams ranked higher than Virginia Tech that did not make a BCS bowl.

0: Number of Big Ten teams that are expected to win their bowl games according to Vegas, host of the Pioneer Las Vegas bowl.

1. Number of conferences who cannot count their own teams: Big Ten.