College Mailbag (cont.)

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Am I right in assuming that if a freshman safety didn't drop a sure interception with a minute to play in Lubbock, Colt McCoy would have won the Heisman in a landslide? And if that assumption is correct, don't you think the voting process is flawed?
-- Evan, Los Angeles

Assuming the Longhorns had gone on to win the rest of their games, then yes, you are probably correct. And yes, that's flawed. But the Heisman is akin to a horse race. While the award's not given out until December, there are unofficial "standings" every week in which whoever's the hottest player of the moment is considered the Heisman "favorite" until he stumbles and/or someone overtakes him. It just so happens that this year, most of the primary contenders were quarterbacks from the same conference who literally knocked each other off the pedestal. So while McCoy didn't drop the interception or give up the touchdown to Michael Crabtree, he did lose to a team led by one of the other primary contenders, Graham Harrell, who therefore unseated him at the top only to then lose that mantle to Sam Bradford two weeks later.

Personally, I just wish there was more time to make the decision. I've been saying for years that the voting should be held after the bowl games, but short of that, it would be nice to have more than three days after the last game to cast your ballot. As it is, it's hard not to get swayed by the "hot" candidate at that moment, who for me was Tim Tebow. But who knows? If McCoy had played in the Big 12 title game that same day, maybe I would have been swayed the other way. (As it was, I went back and forth between both of those two and Bradford a million times in those three days.) Perhaps if there wasn't such a rush to announce the winner, more voters could take the time to sit back and truly evaluate the various candidates.

Stewart, recently it has been noted that tickets for the Orange Bowl are selling for as low as $10 on the secondary market. Gee, that is barely more than it costs to see a movie. Is this a sign of the economic times, an indication there are too many bowl games, or just an anomaly?
-- Thomas Long, Ft. Pierce, Fla.

Bowl travel in general is down considerably across the board, and it's not unexpected. Bowl execs have been bracing for the worst all season as the economy has continued to plummet. People simply aren't spending money this holiday season like they would normally, whether it be it on gifts or vacations or dinners out, and bowl games -- which can be extremely expensive to attend -- are feeling the same brunt.

The Orange Bowl is a particularly extreme example. Virginia Tech fans -- who last I saw had bought 4,700 of their allotted 17,500 tickets -- aren't exactly jacked up for this game both because they were just there last year and because their team lost four games. Cincinnati fans are definitely pumped, but there aren't that many of them to begin with. Meanwhile, all the people (read: brokers) who bought advance tickets to the BCS Championship Game in Miami were required to also buy Orange Bowl tickets, which has left the market flooded with surplus tickets to a game with almost no local interest.

But the Orange Bowl is not alone. Ohio State fans have not sold out their allotment of Fiesta Bowl tickets; South Carolina fans aren't traveling en masse to the Outback Bowl; even Utah fans didn't sell out their Sugar Bowl allotment, allowing Alabama fans to buy up the extras.

The bowls that are doing well this year are the ones that have geographically close participants whose fans are fired up. The Cotton Bowl, with 11-1 Texas Tech playing in its home state, had no trouble selling out, nor did the Meineke Car Care Bowl, with home-state North Carolina making its first bowl trip in four years. The Hawaii Bowl, with the hometown Warriors playing auto-draw Notre Dame, drew its highest attendance in history. The Emerald Bowl, a de facto home game for Cal, sold out for the first time. And the Gator Bowl, which blatantly sacrificed records and rankings to choose two teams, Clemson and Nebraska, with huge travel contingents, was just shy of a sellout as of this writing.

It's an unfortunate trend, but largely unavoidable given the current climate, and, barring a miraculously brief recession, will probably continue into next season. When it comes to the bigger games, however, I don't think you'll see a whole lot of empty seats. If anything, the low prices will allow local fans in the host cities to attend the games. If you're a football fan living in Orlando and you can go watch Knowshon Moreno and Javon Ringer for $24 ... why not?

How come the BCS busters in the past few years haven't been able to play against a BCS opponent they have a legitimate chance of beating? I know Boise State beat Oklahoma, but come on ... Hawaii vs. Georgia? Utah vs. Alabama? Why can't the BCS stage a possible great game vs. a weaker conference like the Big East or the ACC?
-- Nick, Des Moines, Iowa

Well, Nick, if they don't have a "legitimate chance" of beating a fellow BCS team, then they probably shouldn't be in a BCS game, should they? But by ranking Alabama and Utah just three spots apart in the Harris and coaches polls, theoretically the voters are saying the Utes do have a legitimate chance of beating the Crimson Tide (and they did so even before Smith was suspended). Personally, I have my doubts, but then I never thought Boise would beat Oklahoma, either.

I will say this: Utah beat TCU. And after watching the Poinsettia Bowl, I came away believing both teams very much belong right about where they're ranked: On the fringe of the top 10. If the same is true of the No. 7 Utes, then they should be considered no bigger an underdog to No. 4 Alabama than No. 10 Ohio State is to No. 3 Texas.

In other words, there should be no need for bowl officials to take "pity" on the non-BCS teams by pitting them against easier competition. Plus, wouldn't you rather watch Utah take on an Alabama or Texas than a Virginia Tech or Cincinnati? It may well turn out that the Utes are completely out of their league against the Tide, a la Hawaii last year (I'm not expecting this, by the way; Utah, unlike the Warriors, actually played decent competition this year), but the same thing has happened to many other, major-conference teams in BCS bowls.

Can we now drop Ole Miss and add Auburn to Ole Miss/Clemson Syndrome?
-- Skylark Thubedeau, Charlotte, N.C.

Well, here's the funny thing about that. Originally, the phenomenon was called Auburn/Clemson Syndrome, but I changed it after Tigers fans finally embraced Tommy Tuberville in 2004 and after Ole Miss inexplicably fired a perfectly good coach, David Cutcliffe. Now I don't know what to do. While it would seem that Auburn fell back into its old ways with the ouster of Tuberville, as I wrote earlier this month, it did not seem to be a fan-driven decision. Meanwhile, I thought Clemson showed more patience than one ever could have expected with Tommy Bowden. Just one conference title in 10 years is hardly too much to ask for.

So I'm open to suggestions. The definition of the disorder formerly known as Ole Miss/Clemson Syndrome is "the phenomenon by which fans of historically second-tier programs delude themselves into thinking that one isolated period of greatness -- like Clemson's 1981 national title season -- is more representative of their team's rightful place in the sport's hierarchy than its other hundred or so years of football. These fans are chronically unhappy with whoever the current coach is because invariably he's not living up to their idealized standard."

You tell me which two teams' fan bases currently show the most visible symptoms.