NWLB wrote:This validates the view that the MAC has improved. The bowl scare this year has helped lock the MAC into the bids that it has. LDU getting blown out by BC and UConn actually helps in that it shows other prospective teams that you can indeed win in Detroit. Plus we have the same group running the MCB setting up the Toronto Bowl. Give or take Denver, I'd say things look good for the MAC.
I have a feeling that if the money goes to $1.5 mil and the bid goes to the Big Ten #5, the MAC tie-in would be dropped in a heartbeat. I don't think the Big Ten would feel a MAC team would be a worthy bowl opponent for thier fifth place team.
So I will temper my enthusiasm for this announcement.
Warthog:
Interesting. My brother works for a guy who used to be the President of the OSU Alumni Association. I asked him to broach the subject of the Bucketeyes playing in the MCB. As expected, the guy basically said, and I'm paraprhasing here, Ohio State wouldn't stoop to play in the game.
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Schadenfreude wrote:
I really dig the Motor City Bowl.
And it will only continue to get better as Detroit's casinos start to complete their big renovations and build some big fancy hotels in downtown Detroit.
I love the MCB because its the one bowl that is easy for us to get to. I wish I could drop everything to make an impromptu trip to Mobile around Christmas time with almost no notice, but that's just not that feasible for me. Taking a day off work to hit Detroit, on the other hand, is quite doable.
The MCB has been drawing big crowds, and I really like the MAC-vs-Big10 matchup. I'd prefer if they drew higher than the #5 Big10 team, but its fun having that local matchup.
It will take Detroit fifty years or longer to work its way through where it stands today. To fix that city any faster would require literally paving it and starting over totally from scratch.
For all the hype about what the Superbowl was going to do for the city, it isn't happening, not even by a long shot. People take the cultural institutions and entertainment venues and treat them as a totally separate thing from the city itself. As such, they and the rest of the nation look at Detroit in a very negative light.
That said, I've always had a good time going to the DOS or MCB. I just don't want to be anyplace near what I go there to see or do, and feel safer once I'm forty miles north or south.
NWLB
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If the MCB is really set to move up in the pecking order, do you think that there will be other events tied into the bowl. Don't get me wrong, I had a great time there last year, but going to Mobile showed me and a lot of other people what going to a bowl SHOULD be like. In my opinion, the MCB does a poor job of making the bowl an event outside of the game.
From the halls of ivy...
It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work - work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it. ~Ronald Reagan
Bleeding Orange wrote:I had a great time there last year, but going to Mobile showed me and a lot of other people what going to a bowl SHOULD be like. In my opinion, the MCB does a poor job of making the bowl an event outside of the game.
That, indeed, is more in line with the "bowl experience," and I think its one of the reasons why Paul Krebs campaigned so hard to get the Falcons there.
The diatribe I've been saving for a week fits well into this thread. Here goes:
A big revelation for me last week was that Marshall fans were right about one thing: Detroit, through no fault of its own, isn't a real festive place for a bowl game.
Mobile was remarkable. It was glorious standing in downtown Mobile without a winter coat, watching a Mardi Gras parade go by. Both teams' bands marched by, the beer was flowing and there were pep rallies a couple blocks away right on Mobile Bay after the parade. It was fantastic.
That stuff isn't part of the Detroit experience -- and that's why it was such a treat to go to Mobile.
Now, this isn't a recantation of the wonderful things I've said about the Motor City Bowl. I mean them. We have a fantastic thing going in Detroit, and it is only going to get better.
Further, Mobile isn't *all* that. People are friendly, and the weather is great, but it is hardly South Beach or anything. I was trying to explain it to a friend today: Think what Canton would be on the Gulf Coast, and maybe you get a rough idea. I loved it, but it wasn't Nirvana.
The bottom line: Detroit *can't* reproduce what Mobile was able to lay out for us. Plain and simple, it can't.
Even if you find a way around Detroit winter weather, one runs into a couple of added problems.
The main one: People simply won't go to Detroit early, because they don't have to. How many of us stayed overnight in Detroit? Only a few, I would bet. Why? We didn't have to.
'87 did because he came in from Philadelphia. But wost of us? We drove in, watched the game, got a dinner in Greektown, then drove out.
In contrast, Mobile was so far that it only made sense to get there a couple days early if we could. Because it was far, it was a destination.
Detroit is what it is ... and one of the things Detroit is is host to one heck of a bowl game.
I'm thrilled we got to go to Mobile this year. I'd be thrilled to go again. It was great.
But I'll be thrilled to go to Detroit again, too. It offers a warm, dry state of the art stadium, bigger crowds, and a game against a pretty good Big Ten team.
That's pretty darned good.
Fact is, the Motor City is ours in a way the Mobile bowl never will be -- even if the MAC is tied to Mobile for the next 20 years, God willing. The Motor City is our game. We helped get it off the ground. We helped make it what it is today.
So I won't bad mouth the Motor City. We are blessed to have it, and I'll go as many times as they are willing to invite Bowling Green.
The MCB is a great event, to be sure. But you're on to something in regard to overnight stays. I'll bet most all the UT folks went up for the game and came back. The UConn folks, of course stayed. But having a "commuter bowl" if you will makes it tough to reproduce the Bowl Week atmosphere we enjoyed in Mobile.
Here's another thought that I was pondering in Mobile. Detroit is a pro sports town. Sure, there are plenty of scUM fans, etc., but by and large, these folks root for their Big 4 pro teams. I just don't think it will every wrap its arms around a college bowl like Mobile does; the Alabama folks are much more tuned into the college scene.
That being said, I loved the MCB experience. It's a good thing and only going to get better. And as someone who did spend a few days in the area after the bowl, there were some nice, non-bowl attractions for Noah & I.
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Don't forget that playing the game immediately after Christmas helps make it a "commuter bowl". Most people aren't going to go two days early to spend Christmas at a Courtyard Marriott in Livonia.
BUT, the fact that it is near enough to most of the competing teams to be a "commuter bowl" is what has created the wonderful attendance numbers.
Can't have the Yang without the Yin.
By the way Schad, did you know that all the towns around southern Michigan with the same names as W. NY were named after the NY towns? (Livonia, Rochester, etc.) There was an article in the D&C talking about the western migration and how pioneers left WNY for Mich.
The Motor City Bowl can generate overnight stays. I have been told that is one of the reasons they were flirting with NIU last season--because they would have to stay overnight. So its an overnight for some people. I suspect the Northwestern fans stayed overnight, for example.
Maybe they should have some sort of a cash back bonus with the casinos for those wearing MCB apparel? That would create a more festive atmosphere!
I'm thinking along the lines of what the online places do. Perhaps you put down 200, and they give you a 15% cash bonus. You release this bonus to your chip pile when you play a certain number of raked hands.
This sounds like a good idea to me
Or maybe they should legalize sports betting in Detroit, that'll keep the sports fans around town too!
Or perhaps free toll on the bridge to Windsor, or free cover into the Million Dollar Club?
So many things that really sound like a good idea to me!
Lord_Byron wrote:By the way Schad, did you know that all the towns around southern Michigan with the same names as W. NY were named after the NY towns? (Livonia, Rochester, etc.) There was an article in the D&C talking about the western migration and how pioneers left WNY for Mich.
I missed the D&C article, but sort of intuitively figured it must be the case after a couple of years in the Rochester area.
I did know that New Yorkers composed a great deal of the first Michiganders -- Michigan achieved statehood about the time the Erie Canal was completed, so the canal obviously was the most logical route for enterprising folk to try to make a new life for themselves in the Great Lakes State.
Let me add to your list: Utica, Troy, Farmington, Bloomfield... and isn't there a Romulus, N.Y.?
The real stunner for me was how so many of Detroit's 'burbs are named for really tiny places in such a tight geographical area of western New York. Farmington, Bloomfield and Livonia are just spots on a map next to each other in, what, Livingston County New York? Yet they have turned into huge communities in Michigan. Livonia, Mich. is home to more than 100,000 people, I think.
And speaking of counties... there is no reason on Earth for Michigan to have a Genesee County... that must have been inherited from western New York along with its Livingston County.
I'd love to see the article if you can find a link.
