2008 St. Petersburg Bowl

2008 St. Petersburg Bowl

Yeah, I know this has a longer name, but I am getting a bit sick of these sponsors and these long names. So I am just calling it the St. Petersburg Bowl, one of several bowl games played in the state of Florida.

It’s also another regional bowl, featuring teams close to the area. In this case, we have from the Big East, South Florida, and from Conference USA, Memphis. If you had to rank the bowls, this one is kinda where it is, near the bottom. If you were actually ran the bowls from the least desired up to the BCS bowls and the national championship, this bowl would be somewhere near the bottom. Why do I say that?

This bowl features a team from Conference USA that is 6-6, barely qualifying for a bowl, and South Florida with a 7-5 record and having a disappointing season. It was just last year where they were ranked almost the top team in the nation, and fell from grace. Even this year there was promise, but it never materialized.

But this is a nice matchup. Let’s look at both teams’ resume.

Memphis: As we said earlier, a 6-6 record, barely qualifying for a bowl in the soft Conference USA. Yeah, we know ECU beat West Virginia and Virginia Tech, but Memphis didn’t.

There is a strange pattern with this team, going by 3, 2 and 1. Memphis started out the season losing three straight, to Mississippi, Rice and Marshall. They then WON three games straight, over teams like Nicholls State, Arkansas State and UAB.

They then LOST two games in a row to Louisville and ECU, before switching around and winning two games over Southern Miss and SMU. It just seems like it was right for this team to then lose to Central Florida and win their final game vs. Tulane. Perhaps the best win of the year was against Southern Mississippi, who also finished 6-6.

Many will argue that the strength of schedule was incredibly low, and they have no real quality wins in the entire year. Very few teams on Memphis’ schedule will see post season, which makes the Tigers seem like a longshot to win this bowl.

So let’s look at South Florida’s resume:

South Florida started out like a house on fire, beating everybody in their way. Wins over Tennessee-Martin, then Central Florida, and the big win over ranked Kansas had the Bulls on their way. Knocking of Florida International and then NC State seemed to be good wins as they ran the record to 5-0. They looked like the Big East Champs after a month and a half.

Then Pittsburgh came over and ended the dream. South Florida tried to recover by knocking off basement-dwelling Syracuse, but it was never the same. They would then lose THREE straight, losing to Louisville, Cincinnati and Rutgers, before finding themselves in time to beat Connecticut before losing to West Virginia. What started out so great didn’t end so well, but they still qualified for a bowl.

Seven teams on South Florida’s schedule will be in a bowl, of those, South Florida beat 3 of them. This is still a good team, but they folded much like they did last year. They started out great, and shook the college world, then fell hard from grace.

Of these two teams, I think South Florida has a very strong upside and should be the easy favorite to win this one, especially in their home state. The Bulls have played and beaten quality teams. Consider that the best team Memphis beat was a 6-6 Southern Miss, while South Florida beat Kansas and once ranked Connecticut. To me it looks like a lop-sided game.

But Memphis has this thing about beating teams with “south” in them. They beat Southern Miss and SMU (Southern Methodist U), so maybe South Florida has their work cut out for them….

Hey, don’t laugh, didn’t ECU beat VIRGINIA Tech and West VIRGINIA? I mean, there’s some funny stuff going on here. But we will see when they play December 20th. Big East vs. Conference USA, an interesting matchup.