The Return to Bowl Games

Ah yes, one of my favorite times of the year; where all the college football conference title games and bowl games are coming into full swing.  This means my annual series of blog posts entitled "Bowl Bound" is now returning!  This year I decided to add the conference title games to the mix as a lot of these decide where each team goes in terms of bowl games.

Moving onward, on todays agenda is the MAC title game which is pitting the 11-1 (8-0 in conference play) Kent State Golden Flashes against the Northern Illinois Huskies with an identical record.
After that, are the games that will decide who wins the Big East title.  The actual games that will determine this are Louisville at Rutgers and Cincinnati at Connecticut.  In order to make things not as confusing as possible, here is how the Big East title winner will be decided and who gets the BCS bowl bid courtesy of CBS Sports.

Scenario: Rutgers wins the outright Big East title with a win over Louisville on Thursday. If Louisville wins the conference title is shared with Syracuse (and possibly Cincinnati). In the case of a three- or four-team tiebreaker Louisville would earn the Big East's BCS bid.
 

After simulating the Louisville at Rutgers game, the Louisville Cardinals should come away as victors.  Winning 13-9 after being down 9-0 at the half.

 The simulated game was actually kind of boring, it was mainly a defensive battle between the two teams.  However, Louisville could have been in the game earlier had they quit throwing screen passes constantly!  Next up is Cincinnati at Connecticut, which some how plays into the Big East title...not sure how but it apparently does.

That game started off being close, with both teams kicking a field goal and being tied at three for the first quarter really.  It wasn't until near the end of the second when Cincinnati took a 10-3 lead into halftime.  Of which they got the ball at the start of the second half and scored another touchdown to increase their lead to 17-3; afterwards Connecticut started to take some control and scored 11 unanswered points but sadly could not keep up the scoring.  Cincinnati got the ball back and ran out the clock to end the game.

So according to my "predictions" Louisville will share the Big East title with Syracuse and I'm assuming since Cincinnati won as well in my simulations, they'll be in on the title goodness.  We shall find out Thursday if the first part is correct and Saturday if Cincinnati can knock off UConn.

Next up is the MAC title game with Kent State versus Northern Illinois!

In a close game, the Northern Illinois Huskies came from behind in the fourth to take a 27-24 win over Kent State.  We shall find out Friday night whether or not NIU will win.  I hope so.