September 29, 2005
Liberty Bowl's restriction senseless
By Rick Cleveland
rcleveland@clarionledger.com
GIVEN the location of the Liberty Bowl, the new agreement to match Conference USA against the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2006 makes sense. It should make lots of dollars, too.
But the clause that prohibits a matchup of intrastate rivals does not make any sense at all.
There will come a time — maybe next year or maybe later — when a matchup of, say, Southern Miss-Mississippi State or Memphis-Tennessee or Southern Miss-Ole Miss would be the best possible Liberty Bowl matchup.
Rick Cleveland
Bet on it.
There'll come a time when such a matchup would be the best to sell out the stadium, the best for TV interest, the best to make money for St. Jude's and the best matchup, period, for the Liberty Bowl.
The question: Could it happen?
In a word, no. At least not now.
"The wording to prevent an intrastate game is part of the contract, and there is no waiver for that," said SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom on Wednesday.
And that's even though Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone had this to say Wednesday: "It doesn't matter to me who we would play if we were the pick for that game. If that (USM-Ole Miss) is the best game, then I think you play it. It's the postseason, and I don't think it's my place to dictate to a bowl game who we play. We're in a partnership with the bowls and we want the bowls to be successful."
Whose idea was it?
Boone's statement came one day after Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that he was under the impression that schools could make their own decisions on whom to play or not play on a case-by-case basis. Johnson said that Tennessee had no problem playing Memphis, for instance.
And where does Mississippi State stand?
"My understanding is that it's plain and clearly defined (that there will be no intrastate matchups)," State athletic director Larry Templeton said. "A lot of people think it was Mississippi State and Ole Miss, but that's not where the issue was."
So where was the issue?
With Alabama? With Florida? With Auburn?
"I'm not going to comment on that," Templeton answered.
Templeton, who is on the SEC's bowl committee, said Conference USA athletic directors are the ones who presented the idea for the intrastate rivalry clause.
"That was their recommendation from Day One," Templeton said.
If so, it was only because C-USA feared losing out on the Liberty Bowl all together. The Big East wanted the spot opposite the SEC in the Liberty and was actively pursuing it.
That's why Conference USA, knowing that certain SEC schools would under no circumstances play certain C-USA schools, offered the no-intrastate rivalries clause.
Tired old argument
So as it now stands, we could conceivably wind up with Ole Miss or State going to Shreveport to play a Mid-American team in the Independence Bowl, while USM plays, say, South Carolina in the Liberty Bowl.
Make sense? Of course not.
But then it has never made sense to me that Ole Miss and State play home-and-home series with other Conference USA teams but won't do so with Southern Miss.
The old nothing-to-gain-everything-to-lose argument stopped being legitimate long, long ago.
Losing to USM can't lose you any more prestige — or recruits — than, say, losing to Memphis or Tulane, much less Wyoming or Maine.
Contact Columnist Rick Cleveland at (601) 961-7210 or rcleveland@clarionledger.com.
