New Mexico Bowl, Humanitarian Bowl and New Orleans Bowl All Kickoff Today; Channels, Times and Lines

The college bowl season kicks off today, with Brigham Young and UTEP meeting in the New Mexico Bowl, Northern Illinois taking on Fresno State in the uDrove Humanitarian Bowl, and Ohio and Troy clashing in the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl.

For many, this is the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. When college football's regular season ends, it seems as if it's an eternity until the kickoff of the bowls; when they finally get here, they somehow seem to sneak up on fans who scramble at the last minute to figure out what time the bowls are on, what channel they are on and what teams are actually playing in them.

The interest in college football bowls is an interesting phenomenon. The majority of the bowls are not played between elite teams. The matchups themselves are not generally compelling enough to capture the attention of the country, if they were played during the regular season on the campus of one of the teams. But once Christmas trees go up in living rooms around the country, and once these same teams played in a game in a bowl 'wrapper', suddenly there is a big game feel.

Now, nobody would say that today's bowls are truly big games in the overall scheme of things. The early bowl season generally features bowls with teams that couldn't get close to qualifying for a BCS Bowl. And yet, most of the programs playing in the early going are proud to be there, and while not every game will be a sellout, America loves its football in any form...so the buzz around the games will be much higher than it would be for most all regular season games in any of the other sports.

This year, ESPN takes center stage for the bowls, as they have rights to almost all of them, with the exception of three: the Sun Bowl will be shown on CBS, the Outback Bowl on ABC and the Cotton Bowl on Fox.

Today, though, and for the vast majority of bowls, ESPN will be the place to find them.

The first bowl of the season is the New Mexico Bowl, and kicks off at 2:00 pm EST. BYU and UTEP, both 6-6 and on the season, will square off. The winner will end the year with a winning 7-6 record. The loser, well, the loser will say they played in a bowl game. BYU is a major favorite in the game, and is favored by 12 points.

After the New Mexico Bowl, the uDrove Humanitarian Bowl kicks off at 5:30 pm EST when the Fresno State Bulldogs, who finished fourth in the Western Athletic Conference and had an 8 and 4 overall record, take on the Northern Illinois Huskies who were 10 - 3 overall and 8 - 0 in the Western Division of the Mid-American conference. Neither team had a difficult schedule, but both had successful winning seasons. This is expected to be a close matchup, with Northern Illinois a slight 1.5 point favorite.

Finally, the R + L Carriers New Orleans Bowl finishes off the first day of the bowl season when the Ohio Bobcats (8-4) and Troy Trojans (7-5) kickoff at 9:00PM. The Trojans finished second in the Sun Belt Conference while the Bobcats finished 2^nd in the Mid-American East Division. The Trojans are 2 point favorites.

So, today, there are three interesting bowls on and as the country settles in in front of their Christmas trees, perhaps with an adult beverage in hand, the New Mexico Bowl, the Humanitarian Bowl and the New Orleans Bowl will signal that, to many, the holiday season is here and it's time for some football, college bowl style.

Source:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/scoreboard