Scott Ferrell: Time for I-Bowl to look east
July 24, 2005
Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg said he wanted to complete his final additions to his conference's bowl lineup "as quickly as we can.'' That was nine days ago.
There has been no such announcement from Weiberg and the Big 12 office. And really, should that surprise us?
Weiberg apparently gave I-Bowl officials enough of a positive feel that the bowl's executive committee voted to renew a deal with the Big 12. That was before the Big 12 announced its first six bowl tie-ins with no mention of the Independence Bowl.
This was the kind of treatment usually given the bowl by the SEC, not the Big 12. Ah, but the times, they are a changin.'
If being left out of the first announcement wasn't bad enough, now there are rumblings the Big 12 wants to split its seventh selection between the Independence Bowl and the Houston Bowl. After having a shared selection with the Music City Bowl over the years, we all know how that works.
So what's the I-Bowl to do? The bowl isn't exactly working out of a position of strength.
The Big 12 has, in essence, sold off its bowl tie-ins to the highest bidders. The I-Bowl is paying $1.2 million and could probably go as high as $1.5 million per team, but past that it gets dangerous. So the I-Bowl can only go so high with the Big 12.
There's also that pesky matter of not having a title sponsor. While the bowl is on solid enough financial ground to be played without a title sponsor for a second straight year, the future would look considerably brighter with a title sponsor.
Still, that doesn't mean the I-Bowl has to take the humble pie from the Big 12 and eat.
The I-Bowl could align with a mid-major conference such as Conference USA or the WAC. Such an alignment would likely yield a higher spot in the selection process of those conferences. However, the flip side is those schools won't have the same large fan bases and television numbers. [Ferrell forgets that the LA Tech-Maryland I-Bowl was a record setting crowd and one of the Top 5 most watched bowl games in 1990-91.]
Then there is the Atlantic Coast Conference. While the ACC may not be as geographically nearby as the Big 12, the league might offer a better team, even if it is a shared selection from fifth to seventh. It certainly could afford the bowl better treatment than it is currently receiving from its "bowl partner'' since 1998.