The change to the Big East bowl relationship with the Gator and agreement with the Sun Bowl is discussed here.
This is the first time two bowls have gotten together to share conference ties.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that if this is successful, it’s absolutely the wave of the future,” Gator Bowl president Rick Catlett said. “It’s important to us to have flexibility to create favorable matchups.”
Under the plan, each bowl may select either a Big East team or Notre Dame twice in the four-year span.
The rotation between the Big East/Notre Dame and the Big 12 is up to the bowls.
“We can select them any way we want to,” Catlett said. “Obviously, if we select a Big East team two years in a row, then we’d be in a position where we’d have to select a Big 12 team the last two years. But we could do 1-1-1-1 or 1-2-1 or 2-2.”
In all four years of the plan, the Atlantic Coast Conference will provide the opponent in the Gator Bowl and the Pacific-10 will play in the Sun.
When selecting a Big East team, both bowls will have the first pick after the league’s representative in the Bowl Championship Series is named. It is not yet determined where the Gator and Sun stand in the Big 12’s pecking order.
The setup is important because it allows the Big East to hang onto a New Year’s Day bowl berth. The Gator Bowl will be played Jan. 1, and the Sun is set for New Year’s Eve.
“The Big East has a consistent and successful history of being unique and entrepreneurial,” Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said.
Tranghese said the two leagues, bowls and Notre Dame “had the foresight to realize that we could accomplish more collectively than we could as individual entities, a trend that I clearly think is good for the future of college athletics.”
Catlett first proposed a sharing plan eight years ago during a meeting with conference commissioners in Atlanta. He said the Big East was interested from the start.
Part of the reason for the agreement is that the bowls were starting to see the same teams over and over in the bowls.
“Texas just finished playing in the Holiday Bowl for the third time in four years and we had West Virginia back-to-back, and it’s just nuts to do that,” Catlett said. “It’s an attempt to put new teams in and to create matchups beneficial to the games and for the fans.”
With this agreement, the Sun Bowl is upping the amount it pays out from around $1.575 million per team to $1.85 million. CBS has also renewed its TV contract to carry the bowl.
The Big East isn’t done working on the time share bowl plans. Afterall, there is still the loss of the relationship with the Insight.com Bowl to address.
Or will it? Tranghese said he’s continuing to work on ““three additional deals” and that “an announcement will be made shortly.”
Sources tell yours truly the Big East is negotiating with the Autozone Liberty Bowl in Memphis as well as the Gaylord Hotels Music Bowl in Nashville, Motor City Bowl in Detroit and, a long shot, the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
If Tranghese could swing a shared deal with, say, Memphis and Charlotte, the Big East would be in fine shape. Word is the Liberty could land a deal with the Southeastern Conference.
There may an initial stigma or vagabond-esque complaint about this, but I actually kind of like the plan. If the point of continuing the bowl system was to create some match-ups not seen too often because of geography and conferences, then the system wasn’t working. This adds some real variety to it. The fact that the Big XII and some of the other BCS conferences are apparently interested and involved helps.
