Orange Bowl Feeling Blue

There are several ways to look at this year’s Orange Bowl game.

Call it the pre-Atlantic Coast Conference opener.

Call it Game 2 in a best-of-three.

Call it killing some time until the Florida Marlins open spring training.

Just refrain from referring to it as a major moment in this season’s bowl championship series. This has become a backwater game compared to the beachfront BCS property in Pasadena and New Orleans.

When Florida State and Miami play tonight at Pro Player Stadium, it will be their second meeting this season. They will play again in the opener next season -- Miami’s first official ACC game after jumping from the Big East Conference.

So the Orange Bowl, which will be the national-title game a year from now, has been reduced to a neighborhood squabble that probably has more to do with in-state recruiting than national prestige. There is so little buzz around South Beach that both coaches talked about the “great” weather in their opening comments Wednesday.

That has left everyone doing everything possible to sell the game.

“I’m not going to lie to you, we’re not thrilled about this bowl game,” Miami tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. said. “We wanted to be in the national-title game, but it’s good we’re playing our arch-rival.”

Winslow tried to inject some life the proceedings early in the week, after Florida State linebacker Kendyll Pope said that Florida tight end Ben Troupe was “an overall better tight end” than Winslow.

“He’s entitled to his opinion,” Winslow said. “But I love proving people wrong.... I don’t want to sound cocky, but I’m extremely talented. I’ve faced better linebackers than him.”

Even that failed to quicken pulse rates, especially on a national level, as only one out-of-state reporter had arrived for the game as of Wednesday.

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, who has seen enough last-second field-goal tries go wide against Miami, was hoping for a Rose Bowl bid. Then USC was deleted from the BCS title game by computers.

Miami players were hoping for another crack at Ohio State, which defeated the Hurricanes in the championship game a year ago. Then Fiesta Bowl officials invoked the “economic selection clause” in BCS fine print and took the Buckeyes, the same way the Orange Bowl swiped Iowa from the Rose Bowl a year ago.

“As I said before, when we first heard the news that we’d play Florida State, it was a bit of a shock,” Miami Coach Larry Coker said. “But we soon realized that this was the matchup we had and it’s going to be a great game.”

In other words: We have to play it.

“It’s kind of weird,” Florida State defensive end Kevin Emanuel said. “It’s about revenge, but now that we’re at the end, it’s fun.”

Fun for some; economic disaster for others.

A year ago, some 40,000 winter-weary Iowans descended on South Florida and left an estimated $65 million behind for the local economy. But in a game where the “visiting” team is Miami and the “home” team comes from up the road, BCS stands for bowl cash shortage.

“The philosophical among us would say, that’s how the bowl bounces,” Nicki Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Business Bureau, told the Miami Herald. “It’s just a weakened event.”

The game -- which Florida State hasn’t won since 1999 -- usually has national importance. When the two teams met in October, Miami was ranked second and Florida State fifth.

The Hurricanes won, 22-14, on a quagmire-like field. A loss to Clemson put Florida State on the BCS wait-and-see list. Miami’s season flopped with consecutive losses to Virginia Tech and Tennessee. That left Miami ninth and Florida State 10th heading into this throw-out-the-much-lower-rankings game.

“A friend called me and said, ‘Did you hear what happened? You guys are playing Florida State again,’ ” Miami running back Jarrett Payton said. “I said, ‘For real?’ and was a little shocked at first. I mean, it would be nice to play Ohio State again, but we got a different ‘State’ instead, which is fine with me.”

With no other choice, it has to be.