Small bowls have big meaning for some

Enough about the Trojans, the Longhorns, the Nittany Lions and the Fighting Irish. Bowl season is also about the Zips, the Golden Knights, the Scarlet Knights and the Gamecocks.

While most national focus is on the four Bowl Championship Series games, the postseason is just as meaningful to schools such as Akron, Arkansas State, Central Florida and South Florida, four programs who earned their first bowl trips in school history.

Seven teams among the 117 in Division I-A had never played in a major bowl at the start of the year. That number is down to three. (Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana Monroe, Middle Tennessee — there's always next year.)

Nearly all of the teams in the four BCS games are tradition-rich programs that have ruled the college game for years and have played in a combined 282 bowl games.

In contrast, the teams that played in the first four bowl games this past week had 94 bowl games of prior experience. That group didn't even include Akron, UCF, USF or Rutgers, which played in the first college football game in 1869 and is headed to just its second bowl game and first one out of state.

'"Everything to our players is new, unique and exciting," says Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, whose Scarlet Knights will play Arizona State in the Insight Bowl on Tuesday, a rematch of the now-defunct 1978 Garden State Bowl. "When you've been to a bowl every year of your college career, by bowl three or four, you're like, 'OK, that's better than that bowl.' It becomes almost compare and contrast. Right now with us it's like every gift they receive, every event they're scheduled to go to, you see a genuine excitement on their face."

Schiano was an assistant at Miami and Penn State and has coached in the Fiesta and Rose bowls, so he knows how the other half lives. It all depends on perspective. Those accustomed to January bowls are disappointed to play in games below their usual standard of living. (See Michigan.) Those who are usually home for the holidays are thrilled to go anywhere, any time. (See South Carolina.)

In the past, Steve Spurrier poked fun at a certain Southeastern Conference rival when that school played in a bowl other than the Sugar. Now at South Carolina, Spurrier couldn't be happier about a trip to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., to face Missouri on Dec. 30.

For teams playing in 24 of the 28 bowls, the stakes may be lower (the payout certainly is) and the location may be less glamorous, but that matters little to schools hoping to someday make it big.

"Obviously, if we win, I think we'll have a shot at the top 25," Spurrier said. "So that's a lot to play for."