AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl
Missouri (7-5) vs North Carolina (7-5)
Game Time: Dec. 26 @ 5 PM (ESPN 2, ESPN 3)

Tonight’s bowl features two more teams in a period of transition. Missouri is making the move from the Big XII to the SEC next year, as a result this might be the last game they win for the next few seasons. North Carolina’s year started off a bit poorly when the NCAA failed to include them in the football schedule because they forgot that UNC had a football team. Then they canned their coach Butch Davis because of multiple NCAA violations, rumors are that several players on his team were given gifts ranging from red vests to tattoos of their mom’s pictures…or maybe that was another team, either way its expected that the NCAA is going to drop the hammer on the Tarheels.

The good news for North Carolina is that they’ve got a Fedora coming their way. Southern Miss’ coach Larry Fedora will be taking over next year. This game could be a pretty close match; both teams have the same record, they both allow around 23 points per game, and they both score around 30 points per game. Then again, it could be a blow-out, who really knows.

Game Picks:
Everyone picked Missouri to cover the 4.5 spread except Jim and Ellen who went with North Carolina.

Point of SABOWL interest:
Regardless of what happens in this game, Rookie Joe will hold on to his 2 game lead. He was overheard yesterday saying “My record speaks for itself.” It is indeed a pretty impressive record for 7 games into the SABOWL. The good news for the rest of the pack is that with well over 20 games to go, nobody is out of the running. We have 22 games coming up in the next 7 days, things are about to get crazy!

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Southern Miss (11-2) vs Nevada (7-5)
Game Time: Dec. 24 @ 8 PM (ESPN, ESPN 3)

Interesting matchup here: both mascots are monogamous animals (a rare character trait among animals),  during their season finales Southern Miss shocked #6 ranked Houston Cougars by beating them and Nevada shocked nobody by beating Idaho 56-3, the game will take place in Honolulu which is the capital of Hawaii, its name means sheltered (lulu) bay (hono), the coach for Southern Miss’ last name is Fedora which is also the name for a hat that nobody under the age of 72 should wear (the exception being anyone in the mafia, then its ok), made famous by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation “Mele Kalikimaka” is Hawaiian for Merry Christmas – I’m guessing the announcers for this game will say this no less than a dozen times, Nevada’s red shirt freshman QB Cody Fejardo’s last name is kind of like Fedora but not quite the same, and lastly this game is also popularly known as “Wait, this isn’t an NFL game” which is what thousands of people will be saying when they stumble across it trying to find Christmas Eve’s NFL games. For these reasons and countless others, this will really be a game to watch!

Picks for this game:
Southern Miss: Christina, Jonathan, Ellen, Danny/Stephen, Jimmy, Josh, Joe, Joey
Nevada: Michael, Emily, April, Rebecca, Jim

Point of SABOWL interest:
A Nevada victory would put April in a tie with Joe for first place. This would be the first time this SABOWL season that “Rookie Joe”,  as we like to call him in the comment section, would have his lead challenged. April is a 2 time SABOWL champion who has dominated this competition before and sucked all the fun out of the SABOWL season, and nobody really wants to see that happen again. It’s Christmas for crying out loud April! Also, the SABOWL is still waiting to see if Joey will make a big enough splash in the SABOWL to earn the nickname Rookie Joey.

Maaco Bowl
#7 Boise State (11-1) vs Arizona State (6-6)

The story for this game is Kellen Moore, Boise State’s Senior QB who is playing in the last game of his stellar college career. Moore has started every game during his four years at Boise State compiling a record of 49-3! Disregard the fact that some of those wins are against teams such as: College of Western Idaho, DeVry Institute, and Bowling Green. Moore has proven through his stats and winning percentage that he is one of the best quarterbacks to every play in a mediocre conference (the Mountain West…see the Poinsettia Bowl for more details).

This game is one of the 2 games in SABOWL VI that have a 14.5 point spread (the largest spread in this year’s SABOWL), Boise is favored to win. For details on this game just reread the Poinsettia Bowl write up, Boise felt like they deserved a BCS bowl but landed in the Maaco bowl and they’ll also be moving to a new conference next year. ASU canned their coach after they started the season 6-2, then lost 4 straight.

Asked about his thoughts about Boise State and the Maaco Bowl, Boise State’s coach had this to say:

Picks for this game:
Boise State: Michael, Jonathan, Danny/Stephen, Josh, April, Rebecca, Jim, Joe, Joey
Arizona State: Christina, Emily, Ellen, Jimmy

San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
#18 TCU (10-2) VS Louisiana Tech (8-4)

Expert bowl analysts that get paid lots of money to write poorly written blog posts and hang out on ESPN all day thought TCU would really have something to prove in this game. After another pretty excellent season in the Mountain West Conference (just for reference if the SEC is like, say a $500 Rolex watch, the Mountain West Conference is a $20 Rolex you buy off the street in NYC) the Horned Frogs were disappointed with their #18 rank and the Poinsettia Bowl. Also, they’ll be moving up to the Big XII (which really should just be called the OK X because there are 10 teams, not 12 and they’re OK) next year so the thought (again by the experts) was that TCU would be coming out strong in this game. Oh yeah, I almost forgot Louisiana Tech also played.

More importantly, all the drama in this game had to do with SABOWL streaks. Would Joe keep winning and Rebecca keep losing or would things get switched up a bit?

Everyone but Jimmy and Rebecca went with TCU in this one and in the end they were all losers. The Bulldogs of Louisiana Tech hung in there but couldn’t get the best of the Horned Frogs of TCU, who failed to cover the 10.5 spread.