Tuesday, November 11, 2008
How does spending New Year’s Eve in Phoenix sound? For Kansas football fans, it’s becoming a likely possibility.
With more than a month left before the college football bowl season begins, the postseason picture is starting to become clearer for Big 12 teams, and the Insight Bowl in Phoenix is looking like the Jayhawks’ eventual destination.
The scenario is lengthy, confusing and deals with hypotheticals — but it ends with the Jayhawks likely heading out west for the Dec. 31 game.
Here it is: The Big 12 Conference is almost assured of getting two teams in the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, from the trio of No. 2 Texas Tech, No. 3 Texas and No. 5 Oklahoma. One will likely play for the National Championship and a second will be chosen for one of the other four BCS Bowls — The Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl or Rose Bowl. Only two teams from the same conference can play in BCS bowls in the same year, so it’s impossible for all three to reach the BCS.
The Big 12 has ties with eight bowls and each bowl goes one-by-one in selecting a team that they want. The Cotton Bowl has first pick, followed by the Holiday, Alamo, Sun, Insight, Independence and Texas. The team left out of the BCS will end up in the Cotton Bowl, leaving Oklahoma State, Missouri and Nebraska all ahead of the Jayhawks in the pecking order for a bowl.
The Jayhawks, who sit at 6-4, could improve their status and possibly get a better bowl by winning their final two games of the season, but that seems like a slim possibility comsidering they are both against top-15 teams (No. 3 Texas and No. 12 Missouri).
After the Cotton Bowl, the Holiday Bowl could pick Oklahoma State. That leaves Missouri to the Alamo Bowl and Nebraska, with its well-travelling fans, to the Sun Bowl. The seventh pick then would go to the Insight Bowl, with the Jayhawks being possibly the only other Big 12 team eligible for a bowl with six wins still available to be picked. Kansas State and Colorado each have a chance to become bowl-eligible, but because the Jayhawks beat both teams, Kansas would likely be selected ahead of both if the teams tied at 6-6.
The Insight Bowl kicks off at 4:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and is televised by the NFL Network. It would match the Jayhawks against the sixth-rated team from the Big 10 Conference. Collegefootballnews.com currently projects that Kansas will play Northwestern in the Insight Bowl.
If the unlikely scenario plays out, and the Big 12 only gets one team in the BCS, then the Jayhawks would slide down to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.
While these scenarios are speculation, its almost certain that Kansas will be going to a bowl somewhere. In 2006 the Jayhawks were 6-6 but were skipped over for a bowl because all of the Big 12 bowls were filled up with better teams. But there doesn’t appear to be enough teams that will have the required six wins in the Big 12 this season — guaranteeing that the Jayhawks’ worst-possible record of 6-6 would land them somewhere for the bowl season.
— — Edited by Becka Cremer
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