Oregon’s 26-16 loss to the California Golden Bears on Saturday was disappointing, obviously, and for several reasons.
First and foremost, it was disappointing because the Ducks pretty much gave the game away. Depending on how you add it up, they did so via turnovers and bonehead plays upwards of 20 points – in a game they lost by 10.
Second, the offense reverted to pre-Arizona State form. Yes, the Golden Bear defense is far superior to the Sun Devils’, but that can’t justify the level of futility seen in the stagnant passing game or the predictable play-calling.
Finally, the loss kills almost all hopes of a decent bowl game. The Ducks are obviously out of the running for the Rose Bowl and at this point, with three teams above them in the standings, the Holiday Bowl is a serious longshot. The Sun Bowl likely won’t invite the Ducks for a second straight year.
So at this point, even if the Ducks win out, it looks as if they will play in the Las Vegas Bowl, Emerald Bowl or Hawaii Bowl. None are fitting for what would be a 9-3 team.
Who is to blame? Most would say the Pacific-10 Conference. I don’t think so.
The fact of the matter is, there aren’t many options out there for the conference in terms of other bowls. Bowls outside of the region aren’t exactly clamoring to get the third or fourth place Pac-10 team, as those teams usually don’t travel well. To be the third or fourth place team is often somewhat of a disappointment, so fans aren’t exactly gobbling up the tickets and hotel rooms.
I think the bowls (at least the three lower-tier bowls I mentioned above) need to step their game up. Right now they feature the Pac-10 against the Western Athletic Conference (Las Vegas Bowl), the Atlantic Coast Conference (Emerald Bowl, which used to be the Seattle Bowl matchup) and the WAC again (Hawaii Bowl).
Wouldn’t the Las Vegas Bowl be a greater reward for a Pac-10 team and fan base if they could get a lower-tier Southeastern Conference team or even a Big East team? I think a lower-tier SEC team and its fan base could get pretty jazzed about spending a weekend in Las Vegas. Now, the Emerald Bowl might be doing as well as they can by getting in an ACC team, but the Hawaii Bowl could easily step it up and get a BCS conference to commit. Wouldn’t you be stoked to get off the mainland and into sunny Hawaii if you were from the East Coast?
So while I agree the Pac-10 mishandles plenty of situations, the bowl games aren’t their fault. In today’s economy, not many teams travel all that well even when they’re successful, which means the lower-tier bowls are often slaves to regional matchups.
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