This Bowl Fiasco Can’t Be Blamed on the BCS

Colorado State receiver Pete Rebstock isn’t very excited about playing 5-6 North Texas in the inaugural New Orleans Bowl.

“I’d rather be playing a bigger name opponent, an opponent that has more wins,” Restock said. “You’ve got to question how a team with a losing record gets into a bowl game.”

North Texas is the first team with a losing record to play in a bowl game since 1970, when Lou Holtz took a 5-6 William & Mary squad to the Tangerine Bowl.

North Texas earned a trip to the bowl at the Superdome on Tuesday by winning the Sun Belt Conference’s first regular-season title. It was granted a waiver by the NCAA, which requires a team to have at least six victories to play in a bowl game.

*

Trivia time: What was the result of the first Rose Bowl game, played in 1902?

*

Just decline: Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News on what he calls “the absurdity” of the bowl championship series:

“Nebraska sulked and whimpered and whined and allowed others to do the work it could not, hiding behind its very red face in Lincoln, pretending that the worst defeat in the history of its football program was a mere social indiscretion, like a burp in a church....

“Had Nebraska the least bit of decency, it would tell the BCS, thanks for easing the embarrassment in Boulder, but the world can read numbers, and they will always be 62-36, rather like the beginning and ending dates of a headstone.”

*

Did you know? Nebraska will be playing in the Rose Bowl game for the second time.

The Cornhuskers lost to Stanford, 21-13, in the 1941 game, considered one of the most entertaining and exciting ever held in Pasadena.

*

Price wasn’t right: Buffalo Bill receiver Peerless Price was fined $30,000 for shoving the 49ers’ Ronnie Heard after a game was over. It was Price’s third fine of the season for unnecessary roughness.

“In a related move,” says Richard Burkhard of LaughLine.com, “he’ll be listed on the program next weekend as Clueless.”

*

Feeble protest: Mitch Albom on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters:” “[Baseball Commissioner] Bud Selig says the players’ greed is killing us. That’s a little like the customer saying of the lap dancer, ‘She just won’t leave me alone.”’

*

Latrine duty: George Steinbrenner just needs to stroll through a Yankee Stadium restroom to know the park’s best days are in the past.

“Before every home World Series game I walk the restrooms of Yankee Stadium to make sure they’re clean,” the Yankee owner told Esquire. “What happened in Cleveland will eventually happen to Yankee Stadium. We grow. We hold on to traditions in certain ways, but we can’t hold on to all of it forever.”

*

Quirky statistic: By scoring on an 89-yard punt return Sunday against Kansas City, the Raiders’ Tim Brown, 35, became the oldest NFL player to return a punt for a touchdown.

*

Trivia answer: Michigan defeated Stanford, 49-0.

*

And finally: After the lowly Bulls had beaten Houston by 28 points, Chicago’s Charles Oakley said, “When you’re 3-13 , you’re still in the woods. We’re so deep and low in the woods that we can’t even start a fire big enough for anybody to see us.”