May 1 Notebook
May 01, 2006 04:33 PM | General
May 1, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – If only it were this easy 30 years ago. Last week the NCAA approved 31 bowl games for 2006, meaning 62 out of roughly 120 schools will play post-season football games next year. To make this work, the NCAA gave the OK for teams with .500 records to participate in post-season play provided they are from conferences that have contracts with a bowl game.
The number of bowl games could grow to 32 if the Houston Bowl can come up with the money it owes the schools that played in the game last year.
The new bowl games for 2006 include the International Bowl in Toronto which features teams from the Big East and the Mid-American Conference, the Birmingham Bowl (Big East versus Conference USA) and the New Mexico Bowl.
If the Houston Bowl gets its act together the Big East will have six bowl tie-ins, meaning that if six of the eight teams can finish with .500 records they will go to bowl games.
To give you some perspective, there were only eight bowl games in 1966. Ten years later in 1976 that number grew by four to 12 and in 1986 there were 18 – the same number of bowl games there were in 1996.
If the current bowl setup were in place 50 years ago, West Virginia coach Art Lewis would have had five teams qualify for bowl games instead of just the one Sugar Bowl appearance in 1954. Gene Corum would have had three bowl teams instead of one, Jim Carlen would also have had three bowl teams instead of one, and Bobby Bowden would have had five bowl teams instead of only two.
And that would have probably been enough to keep the For Sale signs out of Bowden’s yard in 1974.
Briefly:
They join this distinguished list of belly floppers:
As an aside, the Mercy Bowl was introduced in 1961 as a fundraiser to assist the families of 17 Cal Poly football players killed in a plane crash returning home from a game against Bowling Green. The Fresno State-Bowling Green game raised $200,000 for surviving widows and children.
The game was also revived in 1971 in memory of 14 surviving children of three Fullerton coaches who died in a plane crash.
Our modern day version of the Mercy Bowl would probably have to be the fifth BCS game, created last year to cut the smaller football conferences in on the loot generated from the major bowl games.
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| Jim Lewis |
Harrisburg Senators pitcher David Maust had a perfect game through six innings in a 2-0 victory over the New Hampshire Fisher Cats on April 24. The lefthander retired the first 18 batters before allowing a walk to start the seventh. Maust lost his no-hit bid in the eighth when he allowed a one-out double. He is currently 1-3 with a 2.20 earned run average.
Dave’s younger sister Cheryl is one of our fine student workers in the Sports Communications Office.
WVU is currently tied with Louisville for fifth place in the league standings with 9-9 records. The Mountaineers have nine games remaining against Georgetown this weekend, at Cincinnati next weekend and at home against South Florida to close out the regular season.
Of the three, only Cincinnati (10-8) is above West Virginia in the league standings. Eight teams qualify for this year’s Big East tournament to be played in Clearwater, Fla., May 23-27.
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| Justin Jenkins |
As good as those numbers are, Jenkins still has a ways to go to equal the season put together by first baseman Mark Landers in 1994. The Charleston native hit .416 with 22 doubles, 19 home runs, 81 RBI and had a .776 slugging percentage in 61 games that year. The Mountaineers won a school-record 40 games during his senior season and won the Atlantic 10 post-season tournament.
Pitchkolan scored the game-winning goal for FC Dallas in a 2-1 victory over the Kansas City Wizards on Sunday, April 23.
Have a great week!
