• How the Gator Got #3

    I’m not exactly sure how I got to this point, but I’ve posted a few times on the intricacies of the bowl picks between the Gator Bowl and Insight.  It started back in October when I found this nugget on a Gator Bowl press release: The Gator Bowl will share, with the Insight Bowl, the third and fourth pick in the Big Ten Conference after the BCS. The Gator Bowl and the Insight Bowl will each submit, to the Big Ten Conference, their team selection…Should each Bowl desire the same team, the selection order will be decided by the flip of a coin.. Then a reader showed me this story by Garry Smits on jacksonville.com which had a slightly different version of what was worked out, including a pre-emptive coin flip earlier this year: The other bit of good news is that the Gator Bowl won a coin flip with the Insight Bowl in the Big Ten offices in Chicago (Catlett called heads). Therefore, the Gator Bowl will get the third Big Ten selection after the league champion goes to the Rose Bowl. While I believed the story above (why would they make that up), I wondered why the glossy Gator Bowl press release was so specific about the relationship between the bowls and what prompted the change. So Monday…