CSNbbs

Full Version: Bowls between schools in the same conference
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Pages: 1 2
Out of curiosity, I did some research to find out how many bowl games have been played between schools in the same conference. I found 15, counting the BCS/CFP Championship.

[Image: F7Xo5VK.png]

Ole Miss has been involved in 6 of them, and the Gator Bowl in 5. Let me know if I missed any!
Alabama - LSeaux
(08-10-2019 12:08 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: [ -> ]Alabama - LSeaux

Thanks, good catch! I stopped examining each year after 1979 because I read that the 2015 Arizona Bowl was the first one between conference mates since the 1979 Orange Bowl. Now it's obvious that they weren't counting the BCS championship games.
Nebraska-Oklahoma and Alabama-LSU were rematches of regular season games, but I'll bet most of the others were not.
(08-10-2019 01:31 AM)Wedge Wrote: [ -> ]Nebraska-Oklahoma and Alabama-LSU were rematches of regular season games, but I'll bet most of the others were not.

This is true -- the only other rematches were Wake Forest/South Carolina and Ole Miss/LSU.
Slightly related, UF-FSU rematched for the National Championship one year.
I'm betting most of those SEC matchups in the 60's and 70's weren't rematches. They didn't play a full round robin back then - a six or seven game league schedule was common despite having ten teams in the conference.
(08-11-2019 11:40 AM)Crayton Wrote: [ -> ]Slightly related, UF-FSU rematched for the National Championship one year.

They rematched twice, in '94 and '96

FSU and Miami rematched in 2004 I think
(08-11-2019 12:25 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]I'm betting most of those SEC matchups in the 60's and 70's weren't rematches. They didn't play a full round robin back then - a six or seven game league schedule was common despite having ten teams in the conference.

5 or 6 game conference schedule was common.
(08-11-2019 12:59 PM)EvilVodka Wrote: [ -> ]
(08-11-2019 11:40 AM)Crayton Wrote: [ -> ]Slightly related, UF-FSU rematched for the National Championship one year.

They rematched twice, in '94 and '96

FSU and Miami rematched in 2004 I think

It was right before Miami joined the ACC in 2003. I was at FSU back then.
(08-09-2019 11:40 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote: [ -> ]Out of curiosity, I did some research to find out how many bowl games have been played between schools in the same conference. I found 15, counting the BCS/CFP Championship.

[Image: F7Xo5VK.png]

Ole Miss has been involved in 6 of them, and the Gator Bowl in 5. Let me know if I missed any!

Three of the last four were #1 vs #2 National Championship games:

Orange '79: Oklahoma vs Nebraska
BCS Championship '12: Alabama vs LSU
CFP Championship '18: Alabama vs Georgia

The SEC Games from 1960 to 1972 was in an era where only 6 conference games were played an it was not a rematch. SEC schools did not play 3 of the other 9 schools, some of them they'd only play twice in a decade if ever. So such Bowl games made sense.

But the 1960 (1959 season) match up between #3 Ole' Miss and #2 Tennessee rematch was part of the Championship battle as #1 Syracuse played #4 Texas in the Cotton Bowl and won, finishing 10-0 and National Champion. Had Texas won, the winner of the Sugar Bowl would have had a good chance of being National Champion equaling the 1 loss of Syracuse and Texas -- that year screamed for a playoff. So in my book the January 1st 1960 Sugar Bowl belongs on those NCG list of games above.

It would not surprise me if you did see a SEC vs SEC or B1G vs B1G or ACC vs ACC Bowls in the future. If you only play 8, and don't play 5 then playing a cross division conference mate you are not playing otherwise in a 4 year cycle is not a stretch. If the B1G expands to 16 (say the OU & KU scenario -as an example only-) then a West Division school will not play 6 of the East schools and vice versa. So a Nebraska vs Ohio State Bowl game is not out of the question.

But Bowls tend to want schools from separate conferences, and the bigger ones want at least one very large school traveling a long distance to bring fans into the town. So we may not see many of these. Also conference tie-in preclude in-conference match ups. So it's still likely mostly a legacy of the distant past, except in championship games.
Alabama - Georgia was not rematch
Auburn played Georgia in SEC championship game
(08-12-2019 12:14 AM)Stugray2 Wrote: [ -> ]Three of the last four were #1 vs #2 National Championship games:

Orange '79: Oklahoma vs Nebraska

That Orange Bowl matched #4 Oklahoma and #6 Nebraska.

OU was ranked #1 before their regular season game vs. Nebraska, but Nebraska won that game. Nebraska was ranked #2 prior to the Huskers' final regular season game vs. Missouri, but Missouri won that game.

The Sugar Bowl matched #1 Penn State and #2 Alabama. Bama won that game and was then voted #1 in both final polls.
Syracuse ended 11-0 after the 1959 season. The team was prominent in the 2008 movie, "The Express".

Syracuse vs Ole Miss would have been interesting. However, just wonder if it would have ended up as messy as the Cotton Bowl. This was before the SEC had integrated.
That 1944 Rose Bowl was an odd duck. Sportswriters could have just written it up as an upset by Southern Cal (6-2) over previously unbeaten Washington. But the whole story is much different.

The game wasn't a rematch of conference mates because Washington didn't play any conference games that year due to the war. Their unbeaten season consisted entirely of wins over Whitman College, Spokane Air Command, Marsh Field Flyers and Spokane Air Command for a second time. That was it - their whole season. Why they were considered two touchdown favorites in the Rose Bowl is anybody's guess.

And, between the end of the "regular" season and the bowl, 12 of their players left to join the armed forces, leaving them with only 28 players, including fill-ins from nearby military bases. It's a wonder the game was played at all, and that 68,000 people attended it.
You are right about 1979. Penn State played Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. A ton of NFL players in that game. But it was B-O-R-I-N-G yet intense. Those two teams were way better than everyone else.

My bad. I was a teen then, was going on memory. Fans of the schools hated the rematch, especially Nebraska who had finally beat Oklahoma. The Orange Bowl loved it, as they maximized the number of out of state fans. Super tacky light show halftime.

I think that may have been the Bowl that triggered conference to look into controlling the match ups, why we don;t see them anymore.
Most of those bowls picked their teams prior to conference affiliation for the bowl season. It mostly avoidable now except for the current Championship Playoffs today. The outlier of course is the Arizona Bowl the year there weren't enough bowl eligible teams and it may have been the year that bowl started. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one. 04-cheers
(08-15-2019 10:51 AM)panite Wrote: [ -> ]Most of those bowls picked their teams prior to conference affiliation for the bowl season. It mostly avoidable now except for the current Championship Playoffs today. The outlier of course is the Arizona Bowl the year there weren't enough bowl eligible teams and it may have been the year that bowl started. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one. 04-cheers

There's nothing embarrassing about a bowl between conference teams if it is because something bigger is at stake, such as LSU vs Alabama in the BCS title game, Georgia vs Alabama in the CFP title game, or Nebraska vs Oklahoma in the 79 Orange Bowl, when an Orange Bowl title was as big as anything else in college football.

But we all remember the abject embarrassment of the 2015 Arizona Bowl, when two ner-do-well MW teams were matched against each other because a sad-sack bowl needed two warm bodies, and these were the only room-temperature bodies available. That was a sorry spectacle.
(08-15-2019 03:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ]
(08-15-2019 10:51 AM)panite Wrote: [ -> ]Most of those bowls picked their teams prior to conference affiliation for the bowl season. It mostly avoidable now except for the current Championship Playoffs today. The outlier of course is the Arizona Bowl the year there weren't enough bowl eligible teams and it may have been the year that bowl started. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one. 04-cheers

There's nothing embarrassing about a bowl between conference teams if it is because something bigger is at stake, such as LSU vs Alabama in the BCS title game, Georgia vs Alabama in the CFP title game, or Nebraska vs Oklahoma in the 79 Orange Bowl, when an Orange Bowl title was as big as anything else in college football.

But we all remember the abject embarrassment of the 2015 Arizona Bowl, when two ner-do-well MW teams were matched against each other because a sad-sack bowl needed two warm bodies, and these were the only room-temperature bodies available. That was a sorry spectacle.

Agree to that. 04-cheers
(08-14-2019 10:58 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: [ -> ]You are right about 1979. Penn State played Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. A ton of NFL players in that game. But it was B-O-R-I-N-G yet intense. Those two teams were way better than everyone else.

I remember watching the game, and (a) I didn't think it was boring at all. In fact I don't see how an 'intense' game, as you agree it was, being boring. It was nail-biting.

And (b), I don't think both teams were way better than anyone else. Nebraska and Oklahoma were both really good, as was USC. USC won the Rose Bowl over #5 Michigan and, because they had beaten Alabama during the season, was voted #1 in the Coaches Poll for a share of the national title.

A playoff among USC, Oklahoma, Penn State, and Alabama would have been a whale of a competition. Throw in Clemson, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Nebraska and that would have been a great eight-team lineup too.
Pages: 1 2
Reference URL's