Betting for Bowl Predictions

On Sunday, following the various conference title games, the various bowls will announce their lineups starting with the big bad BCS bowls. How does selection work you ask? Well the basic ground rules are that 5 out of 6 conferences have tie ins to specific bowls (the ugly step child being the Big East) with the at large being selected in the following order this year: Fiesta, Sugar, Orange (note the same order applies to filling in for conference champions that are in the BCS Championship Game). So here are my bowl predictions with the implicit predictions for this weekends games.


National Championship (Jan 8th)
What I'm Willing to Bet: Colonel's House
Teams: Oklahoma v. Florida

I'm willing to go on with the overwhelming evidence that OU will win out over Mizzou which leaves the other spot in the Mythical Championship to Alabama/Saban or Florida/Meyer. It truly is an intriguing match-ups with two of the giants of college football. Saban gets a bad rap sometimes for being a high class call girl. In fairness that really isn't his motivation. Saban simply wants to be worshiped as a demi-god. So his various forays around the football landscape were simply attempts at being the center of the universe and his escape from the pro's was inevitable once he discovered that he's simply is a small fish in a big pond there. Now Meyer, on the other hand, would suck off a corpse if it would further his goals. I'm not entirely sure what Meyer wants: money, power, wins, a hug but he wouldn't think twice about injecting steroids directly into his pupil if he thought for a second it could help him.

Now this difference between the two coaches is important as their teams reflect the psychological dementia that afflict their head coaches. While Saban's teams want to dominate and take the will away from opposition through a pounding running game and a suffocating defense, Meyer's team relies on escape velocity and unexpected maneuvers. In the end Saban's short tenure means the talent needed to overcome Meyer's whoredom isn't there....at least not yet.

Fiesta (Jan 5th)
What I'm Willing to Bet: A Blue Ray Version of Batman: Dark Knight
Teams: Texas v. tOSU
Texas will be picked to fill OU's vacant spot so the question the Fiesta bowl folks is do they want the bi-annual tOSU hordes or the closer but smaller Utah contigent? Banking on massive travel from a region that's ground zero for the US's attempt to best Spain's record time of a super power turning into a shithole might be risky but unless the Sugar or Orange bribe the hell out the Fiesta the giant alumni base and tv ratings will win out.

Sugar (Jan 2nd)
What I'm Willing to Bet: Hitman's Blue Ray Player
Teams: Alabama v. Utah
The Sugar will first take the Florida/Alabama loser after which they will consider who else? Now why would the Sugar Bowl bribe the Fiesta for the rights to tOSU? If they don't they're stuck with either Utah or Cinci. The only way to have a more uncomfortable and less profitable bowl then having tons of Mormons interacting with New Orleans is if suddenly the Mormon church adopted kosher eating guidelines. That said the alternative is Cincinnati and I'm uncertain if anyone recognizes its existence. So the Sugar will bank on Saban and his band of Pan the Goat god worshippers v. Utah for the David v. Goliath storyline.

Rose Bowl (Jan 1st)
What I'm Willing to Bet: US National Debt (somewhere north of 10 trillion dollars)
Teams: USC v. PSU
Just to rub it in USC players will only use their left hand against UCLA and you know what ...they'll still win.

Orange (Jan 1st)
What I'm Willing to Bet: A device that is able to measure my indifference to this game
Teams: BC v. Cinci
Short of Fox using its national security powers and allows the ACC winner (who I'm predicting is BC over V-Tech) to be shifted so that you can have an old fashioned in-state doneybrook of Cinci v. OSU the Orange bowl will be stuck with the bottom feeders of the BCS teams. Luckily the Orange Bowl hosts the national championship so they'll end up making money over the course of the week.

Capital One (Citrus Jan 1) Cotton (Jan 1)
What I'm Willing to Bet: 3 buffalo chicken wings
Teams: Capital One: Michigan State v. Georgia
Cotton: Texas Tech v. Ole Miss

Its pretty much locked in for the biggest of the non-BCS bowls.