Early Bowl Matchups

The first weekend of bowl games has few compelling matchups. This weekend we will see 6 unranked teams battle it out in 3 bowl games, with only Rutgers coming from a BCS conference. Their matchup against George O'Leary and Central Florida could be interesting. Greg Schiano has taken Rutgers from a school who went 26 years without a bowl game to this being their 5^th straight bowl game. Quite an impressive feat. And now there's some talk that the Big Ten wants to potentially add them.

Rutgers freshman quarterback Tom Savage has struggled at times this season completing only 52% of his passes but the TD/INT of 12/6 is still very good, especially for a true freshman. Central Florida has the #4 rated rush defense so there may be added pressure on Savage to get the job done through the air. UCF has a big following and will be playing practically at home in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The fourth bowl game of the season will be Tuesday in Las Vegas, and for the first time ever will feature two ranked teams - Oregon State and BYU. These 2 teams are overqualified for this lowly bowl game. But Oregon State slipped way down in the Pac-10 pecking order after finishing with a loss. And the MWC just doesn't have bowl tie-ins with good bowls, but that is likely to change in the coming years due to their recent success. Both teams have a 3000 yard passer and a 1000 yard rusher so this one should be entertaining. It's not often you get to see two highly ranked teams go at it before Christmas, so be sure to tune in Tuesday at 8pm.