[pincemob]

I have no problem with players expressing their honest views of these bowl cities.  The Pac 12's bowl ties are woeful.  I know there are some valid excuses for it, but I think the excuses are over-stated (like Stanford's fans not "traveling well").  And the sum of excuses comes nowhere close to justifying our bowl lineup which combines lesser opponents with unattractive destinations.  We also make the strategic mistake of playing these upstart conferences like the MWC which we compete with for recruits (3 of our 6 non-BCS games are with MWC and BYU next year).  The SEC/ Big 10 don't play half their bowl games with the Sun Belt/MAC/C-USA do they?  Those games are basically no-win situations. 

Larry Scott should get to work on this.  An easy one would be the former Copper/Insight Bowl, which we somehow lost.  That has a Big 10 opponent which would be respectable, and it's in Phoenix.  I'd also get the Hawaii Bowl back from either C-USA or the WAC.  That shouldn't be too hard. 

And by the way, here are Drew Terrell's views on El Paso from today's paper.  Certainly more diplomatic than the kid from S.C. but he made the same point.

With two losses in three weeks at midseason, Stanford seemed headed for one of the lesser bowl games if it didn't get its act together. Another trip to the Sun Bowl, where the Cardinal lost to Oklahoma in 2009, wouldn't have satisfied anybody, wide receiver/punt returner Drew Terrell said. "We vowed to ourselves that we didn't want to go back to that," he said Friday. "We had become accustomed to this BCS lifestyle, if you will."
El Paso, Texas, is "not the best place for a bowl game," he said. "Just being in that area, seeing Juarez (Mexico) across the way, which is one of the crime capitals of the world ... We'd pretty much rather be in a BCS bowl."

[pincemob]

I have no problem with players expressing their honest views of these bowl cities.  The Pac 12's bowl ties are woeful.  I know there are some valid excuses for it, but I think the excuses are over-stated (like Stanford's fans not "traveling well").  And the sum of excuses comes nowhere close to justifying our bowl lineup which combines lesser opponents with unattractive destinations.  We also make the strategic mistake of playing these upstart conferences like the MWC which we compete with for recruits (3 of our 6 non-BCS games are with MWC and BYU next year).  The SEC/ Big 10 don't play half their bowl games with the Sun Belt/MAC/C-USA do they?  Those games are basically no-win situations. 

Larry Scott should get to work on this.  An easy one would be the former Copper/Insight Bowl, which we somehow lost.  That has a Big 10 opponent which would be respectable, and it's in Phoenix.  I'd also get the Hawaii Bowl back from either C-USA or the WAC.  That shouldn't be too hard. 

And by the way, here are Drew Terrell's views on El Paso from today's paper.  Certainly more diplomatic than the kid from S.C. but he made the same point.

With two losses in three weeks at midseason, Stanford seemed headed for one of the lesser bowl games if it didn't get its act together. Another trip to the Sun Bowl, where the Cardinal lost to Oklahoma in 2009, wouldn't have satisfied anybody, wide receiver/punt returner Drew Terrell said. "We vowed to ourselves that we didn't want to go back to that," he said Friday. "We had become accustomed to this BCS lifestyle, if you will."
El Paso, Texas, is "not the best place for a bowl game," he said. "Just being in that area, seeing Juarez (Mexico) across the way, which is one of the crime capitals of the world ... We'd pretty much rather be in a BCS bowl."