The last time Northwestern won a bowl game was 1948 in the Rose Bowl. The school suffered through a 47-year postseason drought until Gary Barnett brought the school back to Pasadena in 1995, and then won a share of the conference title in 1996 and earned a Citrus Bowl bid. Both ended in losses to opponents with much more manpower. After three more years out of the bowl picture, they went to 2000 Alamo Bowl and were routed by Nebraska. An '03 trip to the Motor City Bowl gave them a manageable opponent in Bowling Green and a respectable final score--but the Wildcats still left town with an "L."
Given this bowl history, the matchup with UCLA in the Sun Bowl does not look promising. But this NU team has Brett Basanez, the man who deserved conference MVP honors. And it remains to be seen if there will be psychological fallout for the Bruins, after their 66-19 trashing by Southern Cal. And even if there is not, this is still a UCLA team that was routed by Arizona--a team far less capable then Randy Walker's Wildcats.
On its way to the Rose Bowl in 1995, Northwestern beat Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State. If they win the Sun Bowl, it might well be the biggest win they've had since then.
A long time ago college sports fans longed for a matchup of Minnesota and Virginia. In the 1982 NCAA Tournament the schools were the top two seeds in the Mideast Regional before upsets knocked them out before Ralph Sampson and Randy Breuer could square off in the regional final. It may be twenty-three years after the fact and it may be a different sport, but Minnesota and Virginia will finally match up in the Music City Bowl on December 30. 
Setting aside for a moment that any writer who links a minor bowl game this year to basketball upsets two decades ago has shown himself to be someone who really needs a girlfriend, this year's Music City Bowl does have more downside then up for the Golden Gophers. 
Bob Knight's fifth season down in Lubbock is off to an inauspicious start in non-conference play. The Red Raiders were beaten 84-73 last night by UNLV. Since two losses to tough teams 
Both schools came within a play of winning their respective matchups with Texas and Southern Cal. In either case, a win would probably have gotten ND or Ohio State into the Rose Bowl. Come January 2 both schools have another chance to prove themselves on the national stage. 
January 2 will see the final game for Wisconsin legend Barry Alvarez. But no legend leaves a larger shadow over college football then Penn State' s Joe Paterno. Is it possible the 79-year old Lion coach will step down? A win over Florida State would close off an 11-1 year, and quite possibly earn Penn State the #2 ranking in the final polls. Paterno would have indisputably answered all of us who thought he no longer had it. What more is there to prove? 
In 1997 Michigan and Nebraska finished the bowls as the nation's only unbeaten teams and shared the national championship. '97 was the last year prior to the Rose Bowl joining the BCS setup--under the current format the two schools would have met on the field for the crown. 
I have been asked on occassion, what my gripe with Davis is. After all, he wasn't the one who fired Knight. Even if Davis does get fired at the end of this season, it isn't as though Knight will ever come back to Bloomington. I certainly don't think Davis should have turned down Knight's job when it was offered to him. As atrocious as the circumstances were surrounding the General's 2000 deposing, somebody was going to replace him. Turning down the job would have made no sense for Davis, nor anyone else, unless they were a close friend of Knight. Why abandon rooting for Indiana, as I did from 1987-2000, because of it?
Never mind the kids who had sweated their guts out to rally from seventeen points down against the program that defines college basketball today. Even if Davis didn't deliberately think of it as a kiss-up opportunity (which he probably didn't), it still showed he saw the win as being about himself and the chance the president took in letting him keep the job. It was not about the players. Contrast with the Knight's reaction after his team won his third national title in 1987--"My first thought is about what these kids have done." Knight's reaction was that of most coaches. Davis showed how much his players were really on his mind when he went to Atlanta for the Final Four and began making noises about wanting to coach in the NBA. Nothing like creating a distraction when preparing for the only chance your players will have to compete on the game's highest stage. 
The coming coaching duel between Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden is a match between the two winningnest coaches in I-A, as the media reliably informs us. Bowden has 359 wins. Paterno has 353. What the media does not report is that this total includes 30+ wins the Florida State mentor accrued while coaching in I-AA. All of Paterno's wins have come at the college game's highest level. 
Because of this rule, the sleeping giant in the race for most career wins is Ohio State's Jim Tressel. Though he's only been in Columbus since 2001, he coached for fifteen years at I-AA Youngstown State. Overall, he's got 175 career wins. Once he gets his ten years in, those all count. He probably won't coach long enough to catch Paterno or Bowden, but this rule will rocket him a lot further up the charts. 
The NCAA record book should be amended to have two seperate categories. One can be for Division I wins overall, in which case Bowden is the winningest coach. But those who want to know who's won the most games at the sport's highest level should be able to quickly thumb through the historical record and find out that it's Joseph Vincent Paterno. 
This is the second in a series of December installments featuring great 
Miami was hungry in primetime. The Hurricanes had lost a potential shot at a national title in 1985 when they were blown out in the Sugar Bowl. In '86 their loss to Penn State in a 1 vs. 2 game in the Fiesta is one of the sport's monumental bowl-game upsets. Playing on their homefield this time, the Hurricanes had to make the third time the charm. And they did. Miami jumped out to an early 7-0 lead, and went to the locker room tied at 7. They seized command in the second half, stretching the lead to 20-7. All season long, the Oklahoma wishbone attack devastated opponents, but Miami's defensive speed was too much for them tonight. The Sooners briefly got back in the game late, on a "fumblerooskie" play, when the quarterback set the ball down on the ground and an offensive lineman scooped it up and ran for a touchdown. But such gimmickry was all OU had left. Barry Switzer was denied, in what would prove to be his last chance at a national championship. Jimmy Johnson had his first. Both men would later coach the Cowboys to a Super Bowl title in the NFL. But tonight belonged to Johnson and Miami. 
