Bowl picture clearing up: BCS or Texas for Rutgers

[CyberBull]

Slim chance of USF getting the Texas Bowl, however see the bolded comment below from  a Texas Bowl official.  It may all be 'talk' since the chance of USF playing their bowl is  slim, but at least they are being professional about the situation, unlike the Muffler Bowl last year which waited until the last second to grudgingly extend their bid to USF.

http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061127/SPORTS02/611270351/1012/SPORTS10

Bowl picture clearing up: BCS or Texas for Rutgers

By KEITH SARGEANT

Gannett New Jersey

The Rutgers football team will clinch the Big East title and a berth in a Bowl Championship Series game with a win over West Virginia in its regular-season finale. The Scarlet Knights' likely destination would be either the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl or the Orange Bowl.

A loss at West Virginia this Saturday (7:45 p.m., ESPN) would send the Scarlet Knights to the Texas Bowl on Dec. 28, according to a Rutgers official who requested anonymity Sunday night.

As it turned out, West Virginia's surprising loss to South Florida on Saturday considerably cleared up the bowl picture.

While the Mountaineers are out of the BCS regardless of the outcome of their game against Rutgers, a win likely would send them packing to the Gator Bowl on Jan. 1 in Jacksonville, Fla., a person familiar with the Gator Bowl committee's thinking said Sunday night.

A Rutgers loss also would open the door for Louisville to capture the Big East title with a win Saturday over Connecticut. But while Louisville would go to the BCS, Rutgers would be relegated to the Big East's third-place game.

In its first year of existence, the Texas Bowl pits a Big East representative against the Big 12's eighth selection (possibly Texas Tech, Kansas or Oklahoma State).

"Our situation is we're going to let the season play out," Texas Bowl director David Brady said Sunday night. "There's still another week and the way this season has gone there are no guarantees, especially in the Big East, as we learned the past few weeks.

"So we're going to sit back and wait to see what happens. If we get Rutgers, we'll be ecstatic. If we get Louisville or West Virginia, we'll be ecstatic. If we get South Florida or Cincinnati, we'll be ecstatic."

But Brady added, "We're obviously extremely impressed with what Rutgers has done this season, and we would love to have them in the inaugural Texas Bowl."

Brady said the game already has sold more than 34,000 tickets, with 14,000 going locally and a 10,000-ticket allotment guaranteed to each team.

Still, that number is less than half of Reliant Stadium's 70,000-seat capacity.

"Certainly Rutgers is a great national story," Brady said. "Obviously Coach (Greg) Schiano has a good reputation, and if he's not a household name, he's certainly a recognizable name. And with their running backs and the offense that they run, I think they're going to create a lot of interest for the fans down here."

But with the game slated to air on the NFL Network, more than half of New Jersey's cable subscribers wouldn't get to see Rutgers finish its best season in more than a quarter-century.

NFL Network is available to about 40 million cable and satellite subscribers, including Comcast and DirecTV, but Time Warner and Cablevision -- two of the state's top three cable services -- don't offer the channel to its customers.

Time Warner serves parts of Bergen and Hudson counties, while Cablevision is offered to an estimated 1.5 million North Jersey and Central Jersey households.

Of course, Rutgers could make all this moot by beating West Virginia. The win likely would send Rutgers packing for either Pasadena, Calif., to play in the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl, Miami for the Jan. 2 Orange Bowl or New Orleans for the Jan. 3 Sugar Bowl.

The Rose Bowl picks first in the bowl pecking order and, if USC beats UCLA this weekend and clinches a spot in the BCS title game against Ohio State, the committee will go scrambling to find a team to play Michigan.

The Rose could choose a Michigan-Notre Dame rematch or pit the Wolverines against a two-loss SEC runner-up, but there's growing sentiment favoring the Cinderella darlings from New Jersey based on their ties to the Metropolitan television market.

The Sugar, which has the SEC champion as an automatic tie-in, has the second selection. Assuming the Rose picks Michigan-Notre Dame, it's unlikely the Sugar would choose a second SEC team so that makes an 11-1 Rutgers team all the more likely to face either Florida or Arkansas.

If the Rose and Sugar both pass on Rutgers, the Orange likely would welcome a matchup of Big East and ACC champions with open arms.

The Fiesta Bowl picks fourth and likely will match Boise State against the Big 12 champion.