From: mm42@prism.gatech.EDU (Mark Mitchell)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.football.college
Subject: Re: Sugar Bowl Thoughts
Date: 8 Jan 93 20:39:34 GMT
Organization: Ramblin' Wrecks from Georgia Tech

v262xxve@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Timothy C Pitts) wrote:
}
}I've said nothing of the sort:  my point was that the Bowl Coalition would 
}not have``forc[ed]'' Miami to do anything different in any of the 
}MNC-related games it has been in besides pitting the Canes against #1
}Colorado in the Jan. '90 Orange Bowl instead of against #7 Alabama in the
}Sugar.  Thus, not only is your comment uninformative, it is misleading since
}Miami would have ended up playing in the Orange Bowl one more time over the
}past ten years under the Bowl Coalition than it did in actuality.

On the contrary, Miami might not have been so quick to turn down the
Sugar Bowl last season if they had to do it in the public forum of
the bowl coalition "draft", in addition to the possibility that the
money excuse for chickening out may have been taken away.  Therefore even 
with the '89 game switched from Sugar to Orange, and the '91 game switched
from Orange to Sugar the net result would be the same.  

But as long as we are speculating about past bowl matchups, we might
as well note that if the bowl coalition worked like it ought to
then Miami would not have been in the Orange Bowl in '83 either,
since it should have been Nebraska vs. Texas for the championship.
Unfortunately the powers that be seem reticent to correct this problem.

}                      Why didn't the Sugar Bowl try doing that last year?

Why bother when Miami had already verbally locked in to the Orange Bowl?

}That's pure speculation on your part, Mark.  You have no idea where Miami
}would have gone, and you have no idea what teams the bowls would have
}invited.  

I have "no idea"?  You mean that for all I know Miami might have gone
to the Lunar Bowl at Tranquility Base?  

I think I have some idea of where Miami would have gone, based on past
examples.  We have two basic models of the universe we can choose:

The Rational, Logical Universe:

Here Miami wants to play in the Orange Bowl every year and realizes
from past blunders in '85 and '86 that if they leave the friendly 
confines of their home stadium they are likely to kick their butts
kicked.  In this universe Miami told the Sugar Bowl to kiss off
in 1991 so they wouldn't have to play away from home and so they
wouldn't have to play Florida.

The Blowhard Universe:

In this universe the Sugar Bowl preferred #18 Notre Dame to #1 Miami
in 1991 and invited them instead.  In this universe, the Sugar Bowl
would still have certainly preferred #5 Notre Dame over #1 Miami
in 1992.

Hence, no matter which model of the universe you believe in, Miami
would *not* have gone to the Sugar Bowl this season without the
bowl coalition, and would certainly have ended up in the Orange
Bowl.

}          I speculate that nobody thought Alabama would lose another game
}after mid-November, and nobody thought the 'Canes would, hence the Sugar
}and the University of Miami would have taken the chance and the same bowl
}matchups would have been made.

This does not fit in very well with the Blowhard Universe model, which
states that the Sugar Bowl would have prefered to invite Notre Dame.

-- 
Mark Mitchell           Georgia Tech            mm42@prism.gatech.edu
   "My dad's a cotton-pickin', finger-lickin', chicken plucker,
               now what do you think about that?"