ShareThisTemple's players and coaches must be wondering how their season can be over.
Seventy of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams will play in bowl games, including 13 that don't have winning records. It's almost inevitable that some season the 35 bowls will not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill their spots, forcing a bowl to again take a team with a losing record (5-6 North Texas played in the New Orleans Bowl by winning the Sun Belt Conference in 2001).
That has not happened yet, but only two bowl-eligible teams failed to land a postseason berth this year. Western Michigan (6-6) has no gripes about being left home. But Temple is 8-4, including a 30-16 win over a Connecticut team that will play in the Fiesta Bowl. Yet Temple got no bowl invitation, though teams like UTEP (6-6, 3-5 Conference USA) did.
Plus, the Owls are a success story under Al Golden, rising from the ashes of a 4-42 record between 2002-06 to become pretty good. Sorry, not good enough.
TITLE GAME: Fans are licking their chops over the entertainment potential of the Oregon-Auburn national championship game and for good reason:
-- Auburn QB Cam Newton will win the Heisman Trophy with statistics that are unprecedented. He leads the nation in pass efficiency with a 188.16 rating, which will break the NCAA single-season record of 186.0 held by Colt Brennan if he maintains it one more game. Newton has rushed for 1,409 yards, the sixth-highest single-season total ever by a quarterback, and he still has a game left. Plus, he brings controversy to the party.
-- Oregon running back LaMichael James leads the nation in rushing (1,682 yards) despite being slowed by a leg injury the past three games, a problem that figures to disappear by the time the teams meet Jan. 10. Plus, James' backup, Kenjon Barner, is healthy again, and he's nearly as explosive as James, as indicated by the 133 yards he had against Oregon State.
-- Oregon leads the nation in scoring (49.2 points per game), and Auburn ranks 105th of 120 FBS teams in pass defense.
-- Auburn is No. 6 in the nation in scoring (42.7), and Oregon's defense is OK, but not great.
-- Both teams run a no-huddle offense, and no team in history gets off plays as quickly as the Ducks.
-- Oregon's Cliff Harris has run back four punts for touchdowns. No one else in the country has more than two.
It's almost impossible for the game to match expectations, but the possibility of a 100-point national championship game exists.
PAC-10 POSTSEASON: The Pac-10 has just four teams in bowls, and you can bet the Alamo Bowl and Holiday Bowl are not thrilled with the results.
The Alamo Bowl was added to the Pac-10 bowl lineup this season expecting to get the No. 2 Pac-10 team. Had Stanford slipped one spot in the BCS standings, it might have been the Cardinal. Instead, the Alamo Bowl gets a 7-5 Arizona team that lost its last four regular-season games to match against 10-2 Oklahoma State. The Holiday, meanwhile, is used to hosting an elite Big 12-Pac-10 matchup, but it gets a 6-6 Washington team to match against Big 12 runner-up Nebraska.
The Las Vegas Bowl (Utah vs. Boise State) and San Francisco's Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (Nevada vs. Boston College) might have fared better because the Pac-10 did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill spots in their games.
BIG TURNAROUNDS: Miami-Ohio was 1-11 last season but won the Mid-American Conference championship this season and will play in the GoDaddy.com Bowl. Meanwhile, Texas, which played in the national championship game last year, but finished 5-7 this year, stays home, as does 4-8 Cincinnati, which played in the Fiesta Bowl last season.
(Jake Curtis' website is JakesTakeOnSports.com. E-mail comments to sportinggreen(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit the San Francisco Chronicle
