Football teams should always take a bowl game invitation. The games are more for the players and traveling fans than the television viewers.
If the Gators get the Independence Bowl, I think 20,000 fans will travel to Shreveport from Florida, plus another 5,000 displaced Gator fans from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The predictions point to Virginia or Virginia Tech. Either team will be happy to bring 20,000 fans out of the winter storms to Shreveport.
Sorry, E-, but I think you are dreamin' here--on several counts.
(1) You of all people know LOT of us "fans" are a good deal less than thrilled with how this season has gone, and see a Crap Bowl as an unseemly reminder of that...We may pull more than I expect from the North, just as you say, but there will still be a BUTTload of unsold tix from those allotted to UF for this one, wherever, WHATever it is--mark my words. Aside from some "snowgators", how many will "celebrate" the season--ours OR Xmas/New Years--in Shreveport? Hell, did you see all the empty seats for our last coupla SEC games--IN THE SWAMP, fer cryin' out loud--when a piece of the SEC-East was still up for grabs? Maybe I'm blind, ignorant, whatever, but I just don't see it in our fanbase, and though there'll be those that criticize us for that supposed "lack of unquestioning loyalty", I'm OK with it: I don't WANT to see us honoring mediocrity, getting so used to it we'll follow it anywhere. In today's world, "voting with your wallet and your feet" is the one way that gets everyone's attention--especially those responsible for us having everything and everyone they can find and pay for to make sure it doesn't happen again.
(2) The way it is "good for the players" is the same way it is "good for the TEAM"--which clearly is the main reason BY FAR that even those of us who might otherwise be inclined to reject the invitation, for the sake of "pride and dignity", have or will come around to accepting it: ie. For purely practical reasons having to do with GETTING BETTER IN THE FUTURE--or at least not falling further BEHIND. If it happens to be something the seniors remember with pleasure, well and good--but there's also a chance they get hurt in the otherwise "meaningless" game, so no matter what anyone may think about my cynically practical attitude toward most of the "post-season" in college football (towards anything BUT the Playoffs now for programs like ours, imo), a case could be made we're not doing THEM any favors playing in it anyway.
You understand what I'm saying here, right E-? Yes, we should "accept the invitation", foolish NOT to given how negative the consequences for those that DON'T make "eligibility". It's almost like dropping to a lower division, like they do it in the English Football (soccer): In fact, all of it adds up to the only real reason to have this otherwise ridiculous situation, where more than half the 100-plus teams in what amounts to the "top division" of college football end up playing in SOME "Bowl Game". You lose so much advantage in NOT having that 4-to-6 weeks more of practice/experience time, plus one more full-contact game against an unfamiliar opponent, that it further separates you from those who do...They're getting better, and you're not.
But it ISN'T some "reward", not really, in most cases--not for programs like ours. More like "avoiding further decline", for the most part. In fact, no matter what kind of "good face" they put on it for promotional/TV ratings purposes, even the "traditional " Post Season Big Bowl Games' luster has been somewhat dulled over the last few years, as we transition to "the new reality". Oh, they are still more celebrated, a bigger deal than the lesser ones (especially the ones at "the bottom" that seem to come and go now, year by year), but let's face it: Unless they (Orange, Rose, Fiesta) are somehow made the actual Playoff Games themselves in some "annual rotation" set-up, they will more and more be just glorified "consolation games" designed for "ideal-TV-audience-consumption"--different from the "Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl" and all the rest only in degree.
