I also find it funny that KU is a trash team when they lost to "God's own team" by 8 points and were able to rattle off 28 points in the second half against your championship-caliber team.

Your definition of a slaughter could have been quickly altered had our kicker made two FG's. But no excuses, you were the better team that day. It's a shame you had to go and waste it with the defense you put out there.

You have a championship caliber offense, the defense, not so much.

Pot meet Kettle

What's this? Va Tech has a 48-7 loss this year? I guess they did look good against Duke and William and Mary though.

And KU will have most of their team back. There aren't too many seniors on KU. I am confident that they will be good once again. 11 wins? Probably not. But they will be a very good team.

Missouri has already bought up all the Cotton Bowl tickets. So your reeruned statement that KU travels better is flawed.

This was nothing more then a handjob.

Your athletic director promised to buy more tickets, the rest of the country sees it for what it was.

And a lot of MU fans that are putting down KU sound the same way. Get off your high horse.

It does matter.

In 20 years we will be saying that KU had a one-loss season and went to a BCS bowl game.

In 20 years we won't be saying much about MU's season. They were ranked #1 for a week? They lost the Big 12 championship game?

Mizzou got hosed by the BCS and their ridiculous rules.

MU, KU, and OU all three earned the right to a BCS game.

KU students and alumni are more attractive for bowls.

There's a reason why there's a stereotype that KU people are spoiled and rich.

I think the fact that they played poorly, and the fact that they played poorly against the team that had previously beaten them, had a lot to do with not getting a BCS game.

Hate to burst your bubble but the rest of the country either:

a) has no idea of the vaginal squabble between your two one-time wonder squads
b) does not give a shit about either team
c) all of the above

Actually this Mizzou fiasco is being talked about along side BCS coverage of every single media outlet I have browsed.

The MU\KU coverage by ESPN's college gameday got the biggest ratings in the show's history.

Did Kansas beat a top 40 team? How did Kansas earn anything?

Don't try and bring logic and reason into the discussion, it doesn't work with them.

Lew Perkins said it will be 70%-30% kU fans @ Orange Bowl

Somehow in 20 years I doubt that either KU or MU fans will forget who won the biggest game in the history of either program.

[QUOTE=KCinNY][QUOTE=Dr. Van Halen]It does matter.

In 20 years we will be saying that KU had a one-loss season and went to a BCS bowl game.

In 20 years we won't be saying much about MU's season. They were ranked #1 for a week? They lost the Big 12 championship game?They'll remember MU won and KU got in the orange bowl via a flaud system and they shit bricks facing their 2nd top 40 team

The game was big at the time, but now it seems to have worked out better for KU.

Nevertheless, KU fans have nothing to feel bad about. Their team competed in every game this season and beat all expectations. Missouri had a great season in their own right as well.

Unfortunately, KU is still a basketball school, and Missouri, is...well...I don't know. If they can keep winning, they might become a football school.

IMO, we Mizzou fans shouldn't be mad at KU at all. The criminally flawed BCS system screwed Mizzou. Kansas had nothing to do with it.

Hell, I hope KU wins the Orange Bowl. It would be good for the Big 12.

Yup, and I hope Mizzou wins the Cotton Bowl. fuck the SEC and every other conference, I say :)

Well, besides Vanderbilt of course.

Thank you. That's very rational.

Despite being a KU fan, I am very irritated that MU got screwed.

No, I agree. But that looks lame in the game day program, you know?

2007: MU beat KU in a big game.

vs.

2007: MU beat KU in a big game, then went on to play in a BCS bowl game.

I'm saying MU's season is considerably diminished by this slight.

They beat #24 (at that time) Kansas State. But if you're talking final standings, no. Did KU lose to any unranked opponents? You see, it's easy to bash when you're only looking from one point of view.

Wow, a MU fan with some sense. Rather than bash KU, be mad at the Orange. I agree, the Orange screwed your team. I would have been fine with KU going to something like the Cotton. Before this season, I never would have in a million years expected KU to do this well.
I hope MU does well in their bowl game, too. Although I will admit that these KU bashers almost make me want to root for Arkansas. Naw, I really shouldn't care about that. I just hope KU does well.

It's easy to be rational with KU fans when you have scoreboard.

:p

THIS.

The selection process being a popularity contest with a wink and nudge back scratching of the BCS conferences is what locked them out of a BCS bowl. Also have to look at the bright side both schools benefit from it as the same amount of money is going to the conference. Plus Mizzou is probably getting more national attention from this than they'd get from playing in the "Didn't Want to Pick Hawaii Bowl".

Is it fair to say that in the battle of the AD's, Perkins outhustled Alden to secure the bid for KU? I think Lew prmised the sun, the moon and the stars to get the Orange Bowl.

Pat Forde
ESPN.com


The day before the 2007 college football season started, I wrote a story about the two most underachieving programs in America:

Missouri and Illinois.


That pretty well set the tone for the least predictable autumn in the history of the sport. Today, the historically inept Tigers and Illini are a combined 20-5. On the first day of December, Missouri was ranked No. 1. On the second day of December, Illinois accepted a bid to the Rose Bowl.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame crawled into the offseason at 3-9.

See that coming? Neither did we.

It has been that kind of year. And it's fitting that it will end in New Orleans, which might be the nation's capital of weird.
This was a regular season that began with Mountaineer ecstasy (Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32) and ended with Mountaineer agony (Pittsburgh 13, West Virginia 9). It began with USC a landslide No. 1 and ended with the top ranking changing hands four times in the last five weeks -- and USC wasn't part of the rotation. It began with Kansas receiving zero votes in the AP preseason poll and ended with the Jayhawks earning an Orange Bowl bid.

We are on pace for more points to be scored and more yardage to be compiled than any season in the game's history. Yet the BCS championship game will pit the nation's No. 3 total defense (LSU) against the nation's No. 1 total defense (Ohio State).

We have begged someone -- anyone -- to accept the No. 2 ranking. Eight teams tried it on for size and didn't keep it long. Six of them lost to unranked teams (13 top-five teams have lost to unranked opponents, eight of them doing so at home).
If you don't believe there's some voodoo at No. 2, consider this: Since Oct. 7, when California climbed to that spot, second-ranked teams in the AP poll have gone a grisly 10-18. The last three AP No. 2s -- Oregon, Kansas and West Virginia -- have gone 0-5 since.

It's been coast-to-coast chaos.


Ohio State lost eight NFL draft picks, including the Heisman Trophy winner, and finds itself right back where it was at this time last year: No. 1 and playing for the title.
A bum knee (Dennis Dixon's) and a backup QB (Stanford's Tavita Pritchard) changed the course of the championship chase in the Pacific-10.

In the Big 12, Mike Gundy lost his mind and Dennis Franchione and Bill Callahan lost their jobs.

The programs formerly known as Miami and Florida State continued to drag down the ACC.

UConn used fair-catch subterfuge to nearly win the Big East -- until it gave up 66 points in the de facto title game.

If eternally futile Vanderbilt could finish a game, Georgia likely would be out of the BCS and Tennessee never would have played in the SEC title game.

In other news, Trinity University won a game with a 15-lateral play that took 1 minute and 2 seconds to complete. But if any school symbolizes the sublime silliness of 2007, it is LSU. I cannot remember anyone having a more melodramatic season.

There were two triple-overtime losses. There were witheringly tense victories over Florida, Auburn and Alabama. There were injuries and screwball coaching strategy and rigorous competition to overcome. There were multiple moments of euphoria counterbalanced by multiple moments of dread.

By Thursday night, the Tigers feared that both their title shot and their coach were gone. Stunningly, they have retained both.

Michigan had permission to speak to Les Miles, whose affection for his alma mater reputedly was such that you'd think he hums "Hail to the Victors" in the shower every morning. At that point, odds that Miles soon would be wearing a maize-and-blue tie behind a lectern in Ann Arbor were 1-10.

Then there were the on-field issues. LSU entered December under the impression that it had drop-kicked its BCS championship hopes by giving up 50 points to Arkansas at home. After that, the Tigers were seventh in the BCS standings.

Today, after a Beamon
esque leap to No. 2, LSU could become the first two-loss team to win a national title since Minnesota in 1960. And it gets a virtual home game to try to pull it off. With Miles on the sideline, for this month and the foreseeable future.

The fact that Les Miles would turn down Michigan just might be the biggest shocker of all in the Year of the Upset. It's certainly in the top five, alongside App State over Michigan, Stanford over USC, Syracuse over Louisville and Pitt over West Virginia.
Turns out the coach is more of a money man than a Michigan Man. And LSU has a lot of jack to throw around when it comes to football, having short-circuited Miles' talks with the Wolverines by offering him a king's ransom to stay put.

It also turns out that the last plot twist of the regular season is a return to normalcy.

At various points during the year, we were left to speculate on what it would be like to have interlopers such as Cal, South Florida, Boston College, Oregon, Kansas and Missouri playing in the BCS title game. Yet in the end, we get blue bloods LSU and Ohio State -- the Tigers appearing in their second championship game since the BCS set up shop in 1998, the Buckeyes in their third.

That hardly means the BCS got it right, however. The system remains an insult to the sport, and to fans who are smart enough to know they're being sold swampland disguised as beachfront property.

Hawaii began the year ranked 23rd in the AP poll and never could get higher than 10th. In a year when a two-loss team will play for the title, the nation's only unbeaten never could get serious consideration for the national title game.

Why? The schedule. Didn't play anybody.

Yet Kansas began the year unranked and rose all the way to No. 2 in the BCS without having played anyone. By Sagarin rating, KU's best win was over No. 38 Texas A&M.

The difference between Hawaii and Kansas?

Conference affiliation.

How would you like to be Missouri today? You beat Illinois on a neutral field. You beat Kansas in front of a 60-40 Jayhawks crowd in Kansas City. You're ranked sixth in the final BCS standings, while Kansas is eighth and Illinois is 13th.

Yet Missouri is playing in the Cotton Bowl and the teams it beat are eating peeled grapes in chaise lounges in BCS Land. Nice system.

The fact that the Rose Bowl took the Illini -- a three-loss team from a lousy Big Ten -- is an indictment of a hidebound bowl that's part of a hidebound system. The Rose Bowl's myopic, weepy Big Ten vs. Pac-10 nostalgia is out of step with the times.

Did it ruin the Rose Bowl to have Texas play USC in one of the best games anyone has ever seen? Was it terrible the year before, when the Longhorns beat Michigan 38-37 on a last-play field goal? Did the world stop spinning when all those Oklahoma fans descended on Pasadena for the 2003 game?

College football fans would be far better served by a USC-Georgia Rose Bowl than by slavish adherence to cloying tradition. But the BCS doesn't exist to serve college football fans. It serves to protect the rich and help them get richer.

Thankfully, the sport with the worst postseason of all is counterbalanced by having the best regular season.

And there has never been a regular season like this one.

The 10 teams that made BCS bowls have a combined 2 wins over other BCS teams.

Mizzou's left out... and has 2 wins against BCS teams.

:shake:

Whatever, I guess.

I was proud to hear that Mizzou sold out it's allotment of Cotton Bowl tickets so quickly.

The Cotton Bowl is going to love having Mizzou.

I also think there is going to be some recruiting advantage by having the Tigers in the Dallas/Ft Worth area for a week with news coverage.

I've been thinking about this a lot today and as much as I HATE Mizzou, I realize that they deserve a BCS bowl more than we do. But at the same time, I am happy we lucked out on getting this bowl game. God I wish there was a 12 team playoff or something so we all could have a fair chance at the championship, we had our chance, MU had their's, OSU had theirs but they lost and same with LSU. It's soooo stupid!! If you are good enough to be in the top 12 you are good enough to compete for the championship game.

:bravo:

I may have to put that in my signature.

Although he's wrong about the crowd - it was no better than 50/50, and in fact, there may have been a bit more Missouri fans there.

There certainly were Missouri fans there when it ended.

DALLAS, TX
Less than 24 hours after issuing an invitation to Missouri and Arkansas for the 72nd
AT&T Cotton Bowl, the New Year’s Day Classic is officially sold out in record time.

Both the Tiger and Razorback ticket offices announced today that their allotment has been sold in less than two hours.

The AT&T Cotton Bowl declared that general tickets sold through the Classic’s ticket office were
sold out immediately following yesterday’s team announcement.

“We had no idea how popular this matchup would be, we feel this year’s AT&T Cotton Bowl provides one of the most compelling matchups of the
bowl season, and based on how uniquely fast this game sold out, I think the fans are getting a sense that
this will be a special game between two outstanding teams,” Cotton Bowl Athletic Association
Chairman Bruce Gadd said.

Much of the excitement surrounding the upcoming AT&T Cotton Bowl can be attributed to the
matchup of Heisman candidates. Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel leads the No. 6-ranked
Tigers against Arkansas, led by last year’s Heisman runner up and Doak Walker Award winner,
running back Darren McFadden.

The Tigers (11-2, 7-1), the Big 12 North Division Champions, are making their first trip to the
AT&T Cotton Bowl since 1946 (Texas 40, Missouri 27).

Arkansas (8-4, 4-4) is making its 11th
appearance in the Classic and its first since 2002 when the Hogs fell to the Oklahoma Sooners, 10-3.

The
Tigers and Razorbacks last met in the 2003 Independence Bowl, with Arkansas winning 27-14.

The 2008 AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic will be nationally televised on FOX, and kickoff is set for
10:45 a.m. on January 1st.

For more information, please visit www.attcottonbowl.com.

Okay, that's one of those "Holy crap! ....wait a minute" sort of stats. There are 7 conferences represented in the BCS, and only Illinois and Ohio State played each other in conference. The other one was VTech and LSU.

Mizzou's point is made without the stat... they beat two teams that made it in. But, of course BCS teams don't have wins against each other... they aren't going to schedule each other out of conference. There's hardly any non-traditional games between big-time opponents.

After all, you don't need them to make it to the BCS, remember?

True enough. What's KU supposed to do, turn it down?

ya, it's kind of a bittersweet moment for us. We should know MU deserves it over us, but KU generally HATES MU so we kind of like seeing them get screwed over, but we know it shouldn't be like this. But we have to be happy about it at the same time. If that makes any sense at all, lol.

I agree with all of it, except conference affiliation isn't all of it. The same ESPN guy has been yelling "how about Hawaii?" for weeks, but doesn't seem to mention that the BCS takes into account the SoS of your opponent's opponents. It's basically how the computer determines if one 6-6 team is better than another 6-6 team. Basically, 'our chumps are better than your chumps'.

As far as the human polls... I'm sure a big part is conference affiliation, even though the humans know the same thing the computers know.

I guess that's not really the point of your post, but it was easier to quote you :p

From what I hear, there's no use showing up anyway.

Rather than mope, Tigers must play no-respect angle to the hilt
By Jeff Gordon
STLTODAY.COM SPORTS COLUMNIST
Monday, Dec. 03 2007

Look at the bright side, Missouri fans. Your football team now has a rallying
cry for the Cotton Bowl, for its offseason workouts, for spring football, for
summer camp, for the 2008 season and beyond.

The national pollsters regard the Tigers lightly. So do the knuckleheads at the
Orange Bowl, who jilted them after their loss to Oklahoma in the Big 12
Championship Game.

“With the result of that game, you have a two-loss team compared to a one-loss
team,” Orange Bowl chief executive Eric Poms said. “That was probably our most
pressing thing to look at.”

Never mind that Missouri beat Kansas earlier this season on a neutral field.

Never mind that Missouri played a tougher schedule, beating bowl-bound
Illinois, Texas Tech, Colorado, Kansas and Texas A&M.

Never mind that Missouri (naturally) finished ahead of KU in the BCS standings.

Never mind that Missouri has an impressive collection of skilled players namely one Jeremy Maclin,
making it one of the most entertaining teams to watch.

Nope, the Orange Bowl wanted nothing to do with Mizzou. So the Tigers will
prepare to play Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl instead.


Rather than mope about this rejection -– which everybody in the business saw
coming, by the way -– the Tigers must turn it into the ultimate motivational
point.

Beating Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl would allow the Tigers to finish 12-2. It
would be a fitting exit for all the seniors who helped lead this program to the
Next Level.

Yes, it is irksome that the Cotton Bowl isn’t a BCS-level game. Yes, it is
ludicrous that teams Missouri beat are in BCS games instead.

But this is more than a consolation game for a program still establishing its
legitimacy. This is an opportunity to advance the program for years to come.

Missouri got on the big stage against KU and played a terrific game on national
TV. That got them to No. 1 in the rankings. That earned them a week of national
media love.

On the even bigger stage of the Big 12 Championship Game, the Sooners creamed
them. Every Missouri fan I talked to after that game – in cabs, shuttle buses,
airports, airplanes – accepted that Oklahoma is just a better football team.

That lopsided loss refueled the national skepticism about the Tigers. That
reaffirmed the notion that Mizzou was just a one-season wonder.

I don’t believe that is the case, looking at the players returning for 2008 and
the recruits lining up to play for the Tigers. But Missouri has to prove it
will have staying power – and the Cotton Bowl affords that opportunity.

This game will draw ratings, with high-profile stars Chase Daniel and Darren
McFadden playing. Arkansas hails from the SEC, the World’s Greatest Football
Conference in the eyes of the national media. Arkansas earlier upset LSU, which
lobbied its way into the BCS title game.


The Tigers should play the no-respect angle to the hilt and make the most of
EVERY SINGLE SNAP before these seniors get out the door.

The Tigers should fly into this game and never slow down, ever. By drubbing
Arkansas -– the only acceptable outcome of this game -– Missouri could finish
the season with a high national ranking.

That would allow them to open the 2008 season with a lofty ranking, which is
half the battle in this BCS “system.” Reputation accounts for one-half of the
BCS equation and loss total -– regardless of schedule strength -– is the other
half.

I don’t recommend the soft schedule approach. That is the Kansas State way,
adopted nicely by KU this season. I’d rather see Missouri play Illinois in a
marquee game pitting two Top Ten teams.

Playing those sorts of games allows a program to strengthen its reputation.
Showcase games put a program on national television, energize its booster base
and attract top recruits.

Missouri came a long way this year. It played a number of high-profile games.
The Tigers got lots of TV time and Daniel became a cover boy.

Getting stiffed by the BCS system was a setback, but the Tigers can plow
through it by dominating the Cotton Bowl and getting ahead start on their ’08
quest for respect.

I think KU has a good shot against VaTech. The Hokie defense will be, by far, the best the Jayhawks have faced this season. However, their offense is nothing special. They have a running QB and a passing QB that split snaps, so their tendencies are tipped by who's lining up under center.

Mangino's a great coach who'll have KU ready to play.

MU better win it's game against Arkansas.

KU better win it's game against V-Tech.

Otherwise, all of these conversations are for naught.

BOTH teams have a chance to finish in the top 5, along with OU. If that happens, all three teams will be looked upon as possibly the best in the nation.

It would do wonders for MU and KU's recruiting as well.

All that, plus if one team wins and the other loses, it's days of 'I told you so' by the winner... of course, to be brought up before every sporting event between the two teams until they meet at Arrowhead next year, plus any thread about Kansas or Mizzou until then.

ya it has potential to be trouble.

Mizzou In Tall Cotton
By Bernie Miklasz


I don’t blame Mizzou fans for being upset over the BCS shenanigans.

But no one should have been surprised. Expecting the BCS fixers to display intergrity is like expecting a democracy-based agenda from the Politburo in the old Soviet Union. This is a corrupt process, run with an iron first by those who have no interest but their self interest, and the NCAA should be ashamed to be associated with such a disgraceful enterprise.

And other teams have been victimized worse than Mizzou was in this instance.

My point: this was nothing personal. Mizzou hasn’t been the only team screwed by this BCS shell game.

In 1998, undefeated Kansas State was upset in the Big 12 title game, but rmained No. 3 in the BCS standings. But the ‘Cats were not invited to a BCS bowl game. Wisconsin (9th) and Florida (8th) got the bids instead. And the 2004 Auburn team went undefeated and didn’t get a shot at the title.

All of that said …

Once the anger subsides, the Tigers and their fans will eventually come around to realize that the Cotton Bowl is the best fit for Missouri in a bowl game at this time. I look at this a little differently than most. First of all, there’s the so-called national championship bowl game, and there are all other bowls. Pick one, select the two teams, fill the stadium, arrange the tailgate parties, have a good time. No sweat. They’re all pretty much the same thing: vacation trips for fans; a chance for the team to finish strong. So I just don’t get worked up over where teams go bowling. That’s just me.

The Cotton Bowl, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Mizzou are a great fit.

Here’s why:

Coach Gary Pinkel and his staff have established Texas as a recruiting base:
QB Chase Daniel hails from suburban Dallas. His return home for the Cotton Bowl will be a big deal. The DFW media brigade is vast, and intense. Mizzou will be saturated in positive media coverage for a week; it’ll be a Mizzou-RAH rally. Pinkel and assistants can use this trip as a lengthy promotional campaign. It’s one big recruiting pitch, free of charge, with the bowl people picking up the tab. Mizzou is being sent to one of their recruiting hotbeds, and the exposure will reach dozens of potential recruits, with Mizzou being placed in the best possible light in the days leading up to the game. I don’t know what the rules are, so I don’t know what Mizzou can or cannot do in conjunction for the Jan. 1 Cotton Bowl. But if it’s permissible, the MU staff ought to invite every recruiting target in Texas to come to the game. An all-expenses paid trip for Mizzou to market itself in Dallas-Fort Worth is a gift from the football gods.

Mizzou is playing Arkansas, a team with a high-profile star in running back Darren McFadden:
This game will feature two outstanding players, Daniel and McFadden, who likely will be among the finalists for this year’s Heisman Trophy. Daniel and McFadden could finish 2 and 3 in the voting (in some order). That kind of showcase showdown, should raise the TV ratings for this 10:30 a.m. (central time) game, and that’s more national play for Mizzou. The starting time is good in that Mizzou-Arkansas won’t face much competition for sports-fan attention.

Mizzou can win this game and finish 12-2 and among the top five in the nation:
It’s important for the Tigers to buckle up, get motivated, put on a dazzling show, and win big on Jan. 1. They still have a lot to play for. The Tigers can end up with their best season since 1969. And a rout of Arkansas would only reinforce that the Tigers are moving in the right direction, and that the best is yet to come. And a convincing win over Arkansas will only remind fans around the nation that Mizzou got jobbed by the BCS fixers. This game should not be viewed, or handled, as comedown. This game is another terrific opportunity for the Tigers. Frankly, I hope the team’s mindset isn’t affected by the negative reaction we’re seeing from Missouri fans.

Pinkel has been given a free no-respect card to play with in 2008:
On that ‘08 schedule, Mizzou faces Illinois and Kansas. Of course, the Tigers beat both teams in 2007, only to watch Illinois and KU get rewarded with BCS bids. A smart coach will use that to his advantage. We just saw Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops make superb use of the no-respect card by getting OU cranked up to soaring motivational levels for the Big 12 title game vs. Mizzou. Stoops had his players convinced that no one gave them credit for beating Mizzou during the regular season, and that the media and Mizzou players dismissed OU’s win as lucky because Mizzou handed it to them with late turnovers and mistakes. By the time Stoops finished with his effective propaganda campaign, his team was incredibly jacked up for the return engagement vs. the Tigers. Can you imagine what Pinkel and staff can do with this BCS snub next season before the KU game? If Pinkel is good at this, by the time he’s finished stoking the fire, he’ll have his players convinced that the selection of KU over Mizzou for the Orange Bowl was one of the great injustices in the history of sports, and nothing less than an act of spitting in the face of the MU players and coaches… and that the only way to make it right is to punish Kansas.

Speaking of Kansas in the Orange Bowl:
… so what? If KU absorbs a smackdown from a better Virginia Tech team, then it will only reinforce the belief that the Jayhawks were soft-schedule frauds in 2007. And about the Orange Bowl…other than the bigger payout, what’s so special about it? In last year’s Orange Bowl Classic, Louisville defeated Wake Forest. Does anybody remember it?

Whether they play in the Orange Bowl, or the Cotton Bowl, the best Mizzou can do is finish 12-2, and probably a No. 5 final ranking in the BCS (barring other upsets). So those goals are still in play. The identity of the Bowl simply doesn’t matter, and as I have already explained, because of the recruiting connection, there’s actually more benefit for this particular Mizzou team to play in the Cotton Bowl than the Orange Bowl.

If things break right in the bowl games, Mizzou will likely be standing in tall cotton at season’s end.

Yup. Everything else is just blabber.

Although I hope Mizzou doesn't have any recruits on the west coast. Early game New Years morning.

GREAT piece. GREAT.

Excellent piece indeed, enough said! Go Mizzou!

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Talk about misery in Missouri.

For Tigers fans, a Big 12 title game loss to Oklahoma was bad enough. No more No. 1 ranking, no trip to New Orleans for the BCS national championship.

At least Missouri (11-2), could still boast supremacy over archrival Kansas, a team the Tigers knocked from the unbeaten ranks with a late-season victory at Arrowhead Stadium. The win gave Missouri the Big 12 North division crown.

Not so fast. When it comes to Missouri-Kansas, two schools that can't even agree on their all-time series record, nothing is ever quite so easy.

Kansas, not Missouri, earned the coveted Bowl Championship Series at-large berth and a Jan. 3 trip to the Orange Bowl to face ACC champion Virginia Tech. Missouri, shut out of the BCS, heads to the Cotton Bowl and a New Year's Day battle against No. 25 Arkansas (8-4), its southern neighbor.

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and his players had nothing but good things to say about the Cotton Bowl selection, from the opportunity to play in the program's first Jan. 1 bowl game in nearly four decades to the chance to make a better impression on recruits in Texas after the lopsided Alamodome loss to the Sooners.

But knowing that the dreaded Jayhawks were headed to a more prestigious bowl, despite the loss to Missouri and lower rankings in both the AP and final BCS polls?

The BCS selection process, like making sausage, is a process not easily understood from the outside. All-American tight end Martin Rucker agreed.

"I don't know how it happens, I don't know why it happens, but it happens," he said. "We just have to be thankful for the bowl we got in there and give it our best shot."

BCS coordinator Mike Slive said that once the at-large teams are determined, the matchup choices are up to individual bowls.

Regular-season winners from the six power conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern) earned automatic berths in the BCS, joined by undefeated WAC champion Hawaii.

The at-large berths went to Kansas, Georgia and Illinois -- a team that also lost to Missouri this season. The Illini face Southern California in the Rose Bowl.

"Kansas is very deserving of the BCS," said Slive, who also is the Southeastern Conference commissioner.

He later added, "I certainly would understand that (Missouri) could be very, very disappointed."

Across the Missouri-Kansas border in Lawrence, athletic director Lew Perkins said the Jayhawks earned their spot in the Orange Bowl.

"We don't have to be apologetic for anything," he said. Kansas finished the regular season 11-1.

Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing agreed.

"We're very deserving," he said. "If anyone wants to doubt us, we've proven them wrong all year and we're going to continue to do that because we've earned the spot we got."

Orange Bowl officials cited Kansas's status as a one-loss team as well as the team's historic connection to the old Big Eight Conference.

Of course, Missouri was also a member of the Big Eight.

"Kansas and Missouri were back to back next to each other," Orange Bowl chief executive officer Eric Poms said. "Having a one-loss team compared to a two-loss team was the most pressing thing we looked at. At the end of the day, that was our thought process."

At Booche's restaurant in downtown Columbia, a popular hangout known for its greasy burgers served on wax paper, Missouri fans weren't buying that explanation.

"It just doesn't make any sense. It's not fair," said Tiger fan Chris Huston. "Kansas had only one loss because they didn't have a chance to play in the title game after Missouri beat them."

Missouri now has four weeks to prepare for its next game. The Tigers plan to quickly cleanse themselves of the disappointing loss to Oklahoma, which won its fifth Big 12 title in seven appearances since 2000.

The Tigers hope to avoid a repeat of similar events in 1998, when Kansas State's run at No. 1 ended with a Big 12 title game loss followed by a monumental collapse to Purdue in the Alamo Bowl.

"You've got to flush it out of your system pretty soon," said Missouri wide receiver Jeremy Maclin. "We feel like we still have a lot to prove."

If I remember correctly, it was "jitters."

besides the money, i guess the cotton bowl is almost as good as a BCS bowl?

imagine having lure recruits with "the 2007 team boasted a 11-2 record and achieved a comprehensive win over Wake Forest in the Meineke Car Care Bowl"