2011-2012 College Football Bowls: Finding The Game That's Right For You

No mailbag this week. Instead, let's build off of a question in last week's.

As a refresher, here is a question from last Friday:

I know Ken Pomeroy has a sort of "excitement score" for basketball games which combines some statistical traits of teams and I was wondering if there were any traits that you would think would lead to more "exciting" football games? Some ideas of mine were passing down PPP, a combination of leverage % and passing down SR (teams that got into a lot of passing downs but were then able to get OUT of those bad situations), and low sack rates, we want passes flying. You could use it to make another Bowl Ranking List, because we all know the internet needs more of those.

-- M.M., via email

In response to this idea, I had a little fun and created what I called the MACtion scale. While Toledo and Northern Illinois were not near the top of the MACtion Scale (suggesting it still needs some tweaking), the list did still have two MAC teams in its top three, which ain't bad.

So I wanted to rank the bowl games based on combined MACtion ranking. And then this column got out of control. Below is a wide variety of rankings; by God, we're going to figure out which bowl game is best for you.

(BCS bowls in bold.)

Okay, so what if big plays and oft-porous defenses aren't for you? What if you prefer other factors like, I don't know, quality defense? (What's wrong with you?) Here are some more combined rankings. If you like pure offense, defense, or special teams, start here.

For you special teams fetishists out there, you should absolutely not miss Boise-Arizona State and Ohio State-Florida. Oh baby.

So forget great offense, great defense, or great anything. What if you just want a close game? Here are the games ranked by their projected margin.

And what if you just like the name on the helmets? What if you want to see great, historical football teams going at it? (Then Northern Illinois-Arkansas State probably isn't for you.) Here are the bowls ranked by teams' 100-year ranking (according to a combination of S&P+ and Estimated S&P+).

So there you go. With these factors, you should be able to find the bowl game that is right for you. And if you want to rank games by the quality of the city in which they are played, or the compatiblity of the two teams' color palates, I apologize, but you'll have to look elsewhere.