Northwestern-Vandy: New Year's Day Is Dead

The Gator and Outback bowls have always been the mediocre sidelights of New Year's Day, where 8-4 Wisconsin takes on 8-4 Tennessee or some 7-5 Notre Dame team takes on an ACC also-ran. They've always slightly detracted from the glitz and glamour of what used to be the queen of all days to play college football. The Outback is still the Outback, a mildly interesting game that's the only thing on in the noon window. It's a fine appetizer for the rest of the day.

The Gator, on the other hand, has gone full-bore for irrelevance. Irrelevance and money, sure, but irrelevance nonetheless:

The [sponsor redacted] Gator Bowl is on the verge of announcing a deal that will bring a Southeastern Conference team vs. a Big Ten team to the New Year's Day bowl game at the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, from 2010-2013.

Hey, that sounds good!

The Gator Bowl will be in line behind the BCS, the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the Outback Bowl in Tampa and the Chik-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta for an SEC team. The Big Ten choice will come after the BCS, Capital One and Outback Bowls.

Yeeeeargh. For those scoring at home, that's either the No. 4 or No. 5 Big Ten team and the No. 6 or No. 7 SEC team, depending on whether or not those conferences get a second team into the BCS. They usually do. Last year's hypothetical matchup, according to Doctor Saturday: Vanderbilt-Northwestern. 2007: Penn State vs Mississippi State. 2006: Purdue vs Kentucky. 2005: Iowa (in 7-5 mode) vs South Carolina. This is not New Year's Day, it's December 28th in Shreveport. No offense to the fine people of Shreveport.

The occasional half-decent Big Ten team is going to end up in this in years when there isn't a second BCS bid in the conference, but when is that going to be? There are now four at large slots for six conferences and Notre Dame, and two of those conferences are the Big East and ACC. Some desperate BCS bowl is always going to snatch up the second-place Big Ten team unless it's just a disaster of a year where only one team breaches 9-3. And South Carolina is about the best-case scenario for the #6 SEC team.

Though Big Ten fans are sure to get sick of yet another bowl against yet another SEC team in yet another city in Florida, this might be of some small help to the conference's national reputation, since most years they'll have a major advantage in the matchup here, which will be a first for the conference. Usually the big TV draws of Big Ten schools yield matchups where the conference plays up instead of down. If the Big Ten can take down the Vandys and Kentuckys of the world with regularity, why, shortsighted TV talking heads might say unwarranted nice things about them. And that would be something.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.