Team Selection
The International Bowl had contracts with the Big East and Mid-American Conferences that allowed them to select one team from each conference to participate in their annual game. By virtue of being the Big East champion Cincinnati was awarded an automatic Bowl Championship Series berth; they would play in the 2009 Orange Bowl. The Gator Bowl and Sun Bowl shared the second pick of Big East teams; after the Gator Bowl opted to select Big 12 member Nebraska and the Sun Bowl learned that they would not be allowed to select Notre Dame, Pittsburgh received the Sun Bowl invitation. The Meineke Car Care Bowl, which had the third selection, picked West Virginia. The fourth, fifth, and sixth selections of Big East teams belonged collectively to the International Bowl, PapaJohns.com Bowl, and St. Petersburg Bowl, which, in consultation with the Big East, decided which schools were the best fit for each bowl. There were three remaining bowl-eligible Big East teams: Connecticut, Rutgers, and South Florida. The previous season, Rutgers had played in the International Bowl and South Florida had appeared in the PapaJohns.com Bowl; bowls in general dislike inviting the same team in consecutive years, on the theory that fans are less likely to want to travel to the same destination they were at the year before. Additionally, the St. Petersburg Bowl, in its inaugural year, sought to have local team South Florida play in their game to drive local attendance. Therefore, the teams were apportioned among the bowls as follows: South Florida to the St. Petersburg Bowl, Rutgers to the PapaJohns.com Bowl, and Connecticut to the International Bowl. On December 7, 2008, UConn formally accepted the bowl invitation, the third in their history.
Buffalo accepted an invitation to the International Bowl following their victory over then-undefeated Ball State in the 2008 MAC Championship Game. Although in past years the MAC champion had been invited to the Motor City Bowl, Buffalo preferred to go to the International Bowl due to Toronto being closer to the school than Detroit, the home of the Motor City Bowl. The game marked the first bowl for the Bulls after their first MAC Championship since moving to Division I-A and joining the MAC in 1999.
The Bulls and Huskies had been frequent opponents during the previous decade as both programs made the transition from Division I-AA to Division I-A. The two teams played each other in six consecutive seasons from 1999 to 2005, with Connecticut winning five of the six contents. The 2005 game, won by UConn 38–0, was the most recent meeting between the two teams. Overall, the Huskies and Bulls had played each other 16 times since their first meeting in 1939, with Connecticut holding a 12–4 advantage in the all-time series. Prior to the 2008 season, Buffalo and UConn had signed a contract to play a four-game, home-and-home series beginning in 2010.
Read more about this topic: 2009 International Bowl
Famous quotes containing the words team and/or selection:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship,—not though it be of the Garter,—confers so fair an honour.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)