Some bowl shifting for Iowa, ISU

Posted Friday, December 4, 2009, at 9:45 PM

Time to plead guilty to a little bowl hypocrisy.

Iowans would be justified in their annoyance if the Hawkeyes get passed over for a BCS bowl berth by Penn State. The two have the same record, great fans, but Iowa beat the Nittany Lions on the road and gave champion Ohio State much better test.

Jon Miller runs the Hawkeye Nation Web site and makes a few bucks booking bowl game trips for Hawkeye fans. Not only is he "90 percent" confident the Fiesta Bowl will take Iowa, he's also 70 percent certain Iowa is BCS-bound even if Nebraska pulls the upset. The Orange Bowl becomes more possible in that scenario. (Iowa over both Texas and Penn State?)

But here's where the hypocrisy, fully-admitted, comes in.

Reports here and here suggest Mizzou and the Big 12 are concerned that Iowa State my jump up in the bowl pecking order and into the Insight Bowl, which is also in Arizona, home state of the Fiesta Bowl. That's 8-4 Missouri being passed over by a bowl by a 6-6 Iowa State team they beat. The Big 12 is concerned. The Missouri fans would howl. Is it wrong to be OK with that?

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Latest update. Dennis Dodd is reporting the following:

"The Fiesta Bowl would be open to matching undefeated TCU and Boise State in its Jan. 4 game, CBSSports.com has learned."

It goes on to say: "While nothing is certain, Fiesta officials were favorably considering such a matchup this weekend based on attendance and television appeal. The Fiesta's interest in the game shot up recently when it realized the potential TV ratings appeal of such a game."

Dodd's shake-down of the BCS, posted before the Texas-Nebraska game is

* BCS title game: Florida/Alabama winner vs. Texas

* Rose Bowl: Ohio State vs. Oregon

* Sugar Bowl: Florida/Alabama loser vs. Cincinnati

* Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs. Boise State

* Orange Bowl: Iowa vs. Georgia Tech/Clemson

-- Posted by Russ Mitchell on Sat, Dec 5, 2009, at 5:32 PM

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I'm a general assignment reporter and online contributor for The Daily Reporter in Spencer. I grew up, went to school and entered the work force right here in Spencer. And no matter where I was in life, I liked to read my local newspaper. My break in journalism came in the fall of 1997. The Daily Reporter's Sports Editor Steve Clark left early on in the football season for another opportunity. General assignment reporters tried to corral the sports results while they searched for Mr. Clark's replacement. In the meantime, I saw an ad for a "sports stringer" without fully knowing what a "stringer" was. I put together a "Pigskin Preview" (the Friday morning high school football preview column) for a writing sample. They let me pick up some of the slack part-time with cross country stories and football coverage for the smaller schools. I began helping more and more. Long story short, they found Mr. Clark's successor, but that guy didn't make it past Thanksgiving. By then, I had enough practice and demonstrated enough ability to become the sports editor. I then slipped into a general assignment position when it opened up in 1998. I've been on the news side, covering six counties for three different publications, for more than 10 years now. It all came from an interest in writing, some good timing and, hopefully, a bit of ability. I'll let you be the judge of that. The Mitchell Report will include views on current events, sports and pop culture.

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