Obersturmführer Jim Delany announced a new bowl lineup for Big Ten football over the last two days. That makes it very old news in the internets age. No - it doesn't matter that it's old news, because it won't affect you, the Penn State fan, for another three years anyhow. Theoretically, you could wait to read this news until August 2016, and you'd still have four or five months to prepare.
Let's take a look at what Herr Delany lined up:
Bowl | Location | Tier | Opponent |
---|---|---|---|
Rose | Pasadena, CA | BigTen Champ | Pac12 Champ |
Orange* | Miami, FL | Messy tie-in | Someone good |
Capital One* | Orlando, FL | BigTen #2-4 | SEC #2-4 |
Outback | Tampa, FL | BigTen #2-4 | Mons Venus |
Holiday | San Diego, CA | BigTen #2-4 | Pac12 #2-3 |
Gator** | Jacksonville, FL | BigTen #5-7 | SEC #4-7 |
Music City** | Nashville, TN | BigTen #5-7 | SEC #4-7 |
Kraft Fight Hunger | Santa Clara, CA | BigTen #5-7 | Pac12 #4 |
Pinstripe | Bronx, NY | BigTen #5-7 | ACC #3-4 |
Heart of Dallas | Dallas, TX | BigTen #8-9 | Big12 #TBD |
Detroit Lions TBD | Detroit, MI | BigTen #8-9 | TBD |
Rose Bowl
We all know what this one is. You stay in Santa Monica or Downtown or Manhattan Beach or Huntington Beach or Newport Beach - really, just about anything with "Beach" in the name, other than "Long Beach" - and enjoy yourself. There's a 99% chance it'll be 75 degrees and sunny. There's a 100% chance you've enjoyed the entire season. Yada, yada, yada, let's move on.
Orange Bowl*
Oh, we movin' on up. To east side. In contract with the Orange Bowl and the ACC, the Big Ten will appear in Miami no less than three times between 2014 and 2024. The SEC gets it twice. And Notre Dame can't appear more than twice.
What's that mean? Would we play the ACC? The SEC? The freaking Domers? I dunno for certain. I've read on the internets that the ACC may swap into the Capital One in those years where the Big takes the Orange. It sounds messy, but if you're the Orange Bowl, do you want to be stuck with an ACC team every year for the next decade? That conference nearly ruined it.
Tier One
Capital One*
See above asterisk on the Orange Bowl. Other than that, Penn State's been to this bowl four times in the last 19 years. You probably know it pretty well already. It was formerly known as the Citrus Bowl. But, because you can't spell Citrus without "UT", and because of how gawd awful Tennessee's been, they changed the name to Captial One.
Outback
Nothing changing here, other than it's not an auto-slot #3/4 Big Ten squad anymore. And that goes for the CapOne and Holiday bowls as well. Herr Delany's pushing "tiers", in an effort to prevent teams from showing up at the same destination over and over again. On one hand, that's likely to increase the travel contingent. Hooray, ticket sales. On the other hand, you might get some mis-matched opponents. A Big Ten #5 vs. an SEC #2, etc. Meh - whatever. That's not skin off Sparty's back. They'll take their ass-kickings with a smile on their pasty white faces, because they're just happy they got the hell out of East Lansing.
Holiday
This is San Diego, folks, discovered by the Germans in 1904. Eighty-six years later, safety Gary Brown, before becoming NFL running back Gary Brown, took the ball out of Heisman winner Detmer's hands and ran 90 yards for a game sealing touchdown. Also, there's a 100% chance it'll be 80 degrees and sunny, because it's 80 degrees and sunny every day of the year. You can't NOT enjoy yourself.
Tier Two
Gator Bowl**
Ugh, Jacksonville. If you'd won just another game, you could've been in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, or San Diego. Instead? You get Jacksonville, home of Lynard Skynard. Where's that Florida Gators jorts pic?
Music City**
Maybe not? Since the ACC and Big Ten will be splitting the Gator and Music City bowls three-and-three over the next six years, maybe you'll instead wind up in....dammit - Nashville. Come on, dude. You can't tell me you're not going to get the invite to Nashville or Jacksonville, and look back at the season and think, 'if those a**hole Big Ten refs could watch replay correctly, we'd have beaten Nebraska, and we'd be headed to San Diego right now, instead of J Percy Priest Reservoir'.
Kraft Fight Hunger
This isn't what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'didn't a 6-6 Zooker squad go there two years ago?' And the answer is yes. But it's going to be a different deal moving forward. First, the opponent will be the Pac12 #4, and not the Idaho State Vandals. So that's nice. And second, it will be played in the 49ers' new stadium in Santa Clara. The new stadium looks kinda cool in photo renderings, and Santa Clara isn't half bad itself. San Fran is 45 miles (read: 2 hours by car) north. But Monterey/Carmel is 72 miles (read: 70 minutes by car) south. Head south, brah. Your woman will dig it.
Pinstripe
What are the chances that, as a Penn Stater, you haven't already been to Manhattan 500 times? 2%? 0.5%? This will be a matchup with the ACC moving forward. But it'll probably be their #2 finisher, because the ACC has to share all of its bowl tie-ins with real conferences.
Tier Stay-At-Home
Heart of Dallas / Armed Forces
This is the artist formerly known as TicketCity. Wooo. And this isn't at JerryWorld - it's the Cotton Bowl. But downtown Dallas has some pretty cool spots, and Pappas Bros steakhouse is worth the visit.
Detroit Lions / We Don't Yet Have a Name
Here's what we know about this one: a) the Detroit Lions are in charge; b) they haven't lined up a conference tie-in (bet on some MACtion); c) it's Detroit, which may have surpassed Cleveland for the coveted title of most depressing city in the world. One positive? Greek town. Some damn fine eats in that area. Another positive? Easy to score crack.
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