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Underdogs get a little love

(AP) - It seems the only folks happy about No. 16 Northern Illinois playing in the Orange Bowl against No. 13 Florida State are the Huskies and their fans.

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When Louisiana Tech got left out of the postseason all together, much criticism was directed at an athletic director who had the nerve to want more than scraps for his program and little at a bowl system that saves room for .500 teams - or worse - but not for the 9-3 Bulldogs.

College football definitely does not embrace the underdog.

Worse, the bowl system gives few opportunities for David to even get a chance to slay Goliath. And when it does, it seems forced. So instead of the Huskies being celebrated, they are scorned by many for doing nothing more than having a really good season and taking advantage of a flawed system.

Hey, I'm sure NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch and his teammates would have liked to have seen Oklahoma play Florida, too.

As for Louisiana Tech, athletic director Bruce Van De Velde has taken quite a bit of heat for not jumping on an invite to the Independence Bowl to play Louisiana-Monroe. Instead, he calculated that the high-scoring Bulldogs could grab a slightly more appealing bowl trip than the hour drive from Ruston to Shreveport. He calculated wrong.

Seems the more troubling part of the Bulldogs' plight is a system in which Iowa State and Purdue, at 6-6, get the bids that could have gone to Louisiana Tech. Or that the NCAA felt compelled to let Georgia Tech, at 6-7, in the postseason.

Louisiana Tech, which averages 52 points a game and played toe-to-toe with Texas A&M, against Southern California in the Sun Bowl sounds a whole lot better than Georgia Tech vs. USC.

But that's not the way it works in college football, where the underdog might as well take a walk.

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