Mitch Picks The MagicJack St. Petersburg Bowl: South Florida vs Memphis

Here's comes another bowl game with a sponsor I have never heard of before.

While I'm sure by Saturday night I'll know everything I ever wanted to know about the sponsor of this game, I have no idea who they are now. It's funny, when the NCAA talks about preserving the tradition that is the bowls, a lot of these bowl games which switch to sponsors names don't even have the same name they had a few short years ago. I remember not too long ago that almost every game had a dot com attached to it, now it's just a handful.

Gone are the days of the good old fashioned Poulan Weed Eater Bowl and soon enough I'll be writing about the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Talk about exploited, I don't get a dime from any of these people. I guess a name like St. Petersburg wasn't long enough, I still haven't hit the save button yet so I'm not even sure my blogging platform is going to allow a title this long, but I am going to find out pretty soon.

In any event we have just a few more days to get entered into the free bowl picking contest. While I've sent out well over 500 entries I've gotten just a handful back. Not a big deal as you still have plenty of time to get entered. If you have registered and you haven't got your entry form, by all means email me and I'll shoot you out a copy if I can see that you are signed up.

I've also posted some of Jordan's picks, at least for the games being played on December 20th. I don't read his picks ahead of time but I know so far we don't agree on a lot, it

It's probably a good time to start up polls on all of these games in the forum as I believe the poll picks at a much higher rate than either of us, somewhere North of 80%. Feel free to pop in anytime as I'm hoping the chat room starts to fill up again once the games kick off, we certainly have had a good time in there since we opened it fairly late in the season.

In any event, let's get to the game.

The MagicJack St. Petersburg Bowl  Tropicana Field  St. Pete., FL

Memphis (6-6) Vs. South Florida (7-5)

Saturday December 20, 2008  4:30 EST  Line: South Florida -12 1/2

Overview:

I'm sure glad they started this bowl this year because I'm not sure 33 would have got it done and I always welcome the chance to talk about 6-6 teams that go to a bowl, especially when one of those 6 wins comes against a 1-AA team.

I'm just saying for the NCAA's sake that some of these 6-6 teams better win and win nicely especially those with the 1-AA win baggage as it's going to be a long off season for them as I plan on writing enough articles on the subject that it's sure to hit the mainstream, such is the power of the Internet.

In any event, Memphis comes in like you know, at 6-6,. At least Tommy West's squad can also add that aside from needing to play a 1-AA team to become bowl eligible, they didn't beat a team with a winning record all year long. They beat only one bowl team and that was a 6-6 Southern Miss team whose bowl season will already be over by the time Santa comes to visit.

Memphis got it done primarily with two Juco transfers at QB and running back who are fine players, Arkelon Hall and Curtis Steele, but Hall didn't play in two of the Tigers wins including the one against Southern Miss.

South Florida had much loftier goals when the season started as they were ranked near the top 10 and many were thinking BCS game for the Bulls. Personally I'm not surprised USF didn't have the year they expected as they are still a program on the rise and aren't quite in reload mode in recruiting and it is going to take a few years for their recent successes to kick in.

USF offense begins and ends with play maker Matt Grothe who makes plays with his arm and his feet but over the past few seasons he has thrown far too many bad passes which wind up going the other way, he'll need to avoid that in order to win this one.

On defense, it all falls on the Bulls staunch defensive line led by George Selvie. While Selvie didn't have the sack totals he had a year ago, he was dinged up a lot of the year and the total DL's ability means USF doesn't need to blitz much which frees up a lot of players which is a big reason why they have an overall superlative defense.

See Mitch's 2008 St. Petersburg Bowl Pick against the spread