Kevin A. Roberts
As we discovered last night, during Bowl Selection Sunday, the University of Missouri ended up with the Big 12’s fourth-ranked bowl—the Insight Bowl in Tempe, Ariz.—despite finishing the season with the conference’s second-best resumé (according to the BCS system, the one supposedly governing the post-season).
In the final regular-season BCS rankings, Mizzou was No. 12, Oklahoma State University No. 14, Texas A&M No. 17, and the University of Nebraska No. 18.
Missouri, not Texas A&M, should be in the Cotton Bowl, playing tenth-ranked LSU in a game that would have pitted two of the top four teams that barely missed making the BCS bowls.
Instead, Missouri’s opponent, the University of Iowa, isn’t even ranked in the BCS Top 25. Tigers coach Gary Pinkel, of course, said all of the right things about the great bowl and great opponent, but for the fourth consecutive year, the Tigers will play in a bowl game that’s at least one notch below a team that it had bettered in the Big 12 regular-season results.
The only mild surprise was that Missouri slipped ahead of the University of Nebraska in the minds of the Insight Bowl, sending the Huskers to the Holiday Bowl against 6-6 Washington University, which many (including myself) had predicted would play Mizzou. It’s likely that Nebraska’s impending departure from the Big 12 had more to do with this than its BCS finish.
Since blogging on Friday, I came upon one other fact relevant to the Cotton Bowl discussion: In 2007, Missouri sold out its 16,000-seat ticket allotment to that bowl in less than 24 hours.
So much for not “traveling well.”
To repeat: Mizzou outranked Texas A&M by five spots in the BCS rankings; Missouri whipped Texas A&M by a score of 30-9 on the Aggies’ home field just six weeks ago; and Missouri had a better record at 10-2 than the Aggies’ 9-3.
It is what it is.
