Orange Bowl 2012: 2 Words Why This Will Be the Worst Big Bowl

The BCS Selection Show is mere hours away as the fate of a handful of college football's top teams await the appointment of their next opponent.

According to several projections, including this one from sbnation.com, the BCS rundown will look like this:

BCS Championship Game: LSU vs. Oklahoma State
Rose Bowl: Oregon vs. Wisconsin
Sugar Bowl: Alabama vs. Stanford
Fiesta Bowl: Kansas State vs. Michigan
Orange Bowl: Clemson vs. West Virginia

One of these games is not like the other as the Orange Bowl presents two teams for which the college football world could not care.

Two words can explain why the Clemson-West Virginia showdown will be the worst of the BCS contests: Big East, Clemson.

Big East

Let's not beat around the bush. There is little about Big East football that is exciting, at least in the grand scheme of college football given the exhilarating nature of the other BCS conferences.

In a conference that featured no runaway champion, no team with double-digit wins and at least two losses from every member in the division, how is it that we can be excited about the Big East product in the BCS?

When West Virginia, Cincinnati and Louisville are almost interchangeable components in the BCS system, there is a little too much parity.

Let's not forget that the Mountaineers, if it were not for a B.J. Daniels fumble while South Florida was driving late in the game, could have lost to the Bulls, effectively ousting them from BCS contention.

And with the conference on the brink of dissolving, who knows what kind of football product will pour out of the Big East in the next few seasons.

Clemson

If there is one thing about Clemson that has become tradition in recent years, it is that Clemson will fall back onto some level of mediocrity and head-scratching bewilderment.

The Tigers nearly did the same this season, but thanks to a phenomenal mid-season run that took them from unranked to the Top 10, Dabo Swinney's team survived a late-season crumble before thrashing the Hokies for the second time this year to claim the ACC crown.

Oh yes, Clemson has been a good story for most of the year with quarterback Tajh Boyd and the sensational freshman receiver Sammy Watkins. 

But after what had looked like a Tigers team that could potentially run the table, they won just one of their last four games and nearly dropped all four that very well could have jeopardized their conference title contention.

Bottom Line

So this is what the 2012 Orange Bowl has prepared for us: an exciting Clemson team with kind of a dual-personality featuring some great play makers at the skill positions against a Big East qualifier that could have been exchanged for two other ones.

Hold that up against any of the other BCS bowl games for more than 10 seconds.