The Big 12 and the Big East will meet in the postseason next year - Sun Bowl be damned. It's unclear exactly where the new bowl will fall on the Big East and Big 12 bowl landscape, but depending on the payout made available by the Yankee Bowl (snork) it could match the third pick of the Big East's bowl teams against the sixth selection from the Big 12.
My hopes for this big apple bowl to become a big-league bowl were dashed when the Big East rolled out the Big East's Associate Commissioner to talk about the new bowl.
“If you are a college football fan and you could see Rutgers play Kansas or West Virginia play Colorado or Connecticut play Texas Tech, those are teams you don’t see very often,” Big East associate commissioner Nick Carparelli Jr. said.
This new bowl will face the same issues that plagued northern bowls from the beginning : the low prestige of being the newest bowl, its ties with the least renowned BCS conference and the promise of watching a cold weather bowl. The Big East is a fine football conference but outside of WVU the fans just aren't known for attending bowl games. Add to that the madness that consumes NYC during the holidays and there are as many reasons to avoid a New York area bowl game as there are to attend it.
Here's the kicker for me: when a selected team's fans do stay away from the Yankee Bowl there aren't a ton of college football fans in NYC (aside from some conference alumni) that would spend an evening at a Big East/Big 12 game just for kicks. The Sun Bowl became legendary through the involvement of El Paso natives filling the game to near capacity on New Year's Eve. If the new Yankee Bowl is poorly attended the lack of in-town college football interest in New York City will contain this bowl to low exposure or worse: a very short lifespan.
I hate to be so negative about the new bowl, because I really want the new bowls to succeed for the Big East, but there are a lot of drawbacks to holding a bowl game 1) In cold weather 2)in NYC for the holidays 3) in a baseball stadium. If you're the Big East it's almost not worth promoting this as your marquee non-BCS bowl since the chance for failure is so great.
With that said I like that the Big 12 will likely send their 6th or 7th bowl selection to face the Big East's 3d or 4th pick - that is by no means a guaranteed win for either conference's team and it generates interest in two typically unnatural rivals. A better selection to pit against the Big East may have been the Big 10 but I don't think those conferences will ever agree to play in the postseason.
So Yankee Bowl, a toast to a long and prosperous relationship with the Big East: to good games, good friends and good weather; and last but not least, good luck.
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