Holiday Bowl! Celebrate!

I believe the eloquent Madonna said it best when she sang of the Holiday Bowl, “If we took a holiday/Took sone time to celebrate/Just one day out of life/It would be … it would be so nice.” She was singing about the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl, wasn’t she?

Well, she could have been because the Holiday Bowl always seems like such a nice affair, pitting two “almost could have been” teams in a pre-New Year’s game on the West Coast. The Pac 10 representative is always the second or third place team that just missed out on going to the Rose Bowl and the other team is usually, well, Texas, or some other team from Texas or some other Big 12 team that maybe could have had a shot at playing in a real bowl game. So it’s nice they get to play in this one.

This year’s Lukewarm Bowl features the #12 Arizona State Sun Devils that lost to USC over the Thanksgiving holiday and hence missed out on their trip to Pasadena. They also lost to Oregon but otherwise beat all takers and are probably feeling a little cheated by the whole BCS selection process.

(It’s time for the good times/Forget about the bad times … We need a holiday.)

On the opposite sideline will be the #17 Texas Longhorns, just a couple years removed from their mythical National Championship glory. UT looked like a BCS-bound team most of the time this year but dropped the ball against Kansas State, got roughed up by Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout and then lost to Texas A&M at the end of the season.

(Put your troubles down/It’s time to celebrate … We need a holiday.)

This match-up has the very real potential to produce a decent game, but I’m guessing one team feeds off their disappointments while the other one gets eaten. The Horns have had a month to stew over their loss to the Aggies and have something to prove tonight, so I’m taking UT in a rout.

It would be so nice.

Holiday Bowl! Celebrate! and related information can be found in Arizona State Sun Devils, Longhorns, NCAA Football