The Cotton Bowl And The Big Ten, A Marriage Made In Heaven?

If you'll remember about two weeks ago, Husker Mike talked about what bowl games would be good for the Big 10 after the 2013 season moves on. With the adaptation of the "College Football Playoff" coming soon, there seems to be another shift of where conferences will send their teams that don't make the playoff.

As I pined in the comments below, I thought that the Cotton Bowl at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington would be the big prize that the B1G could possibly get. After seeing what Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News wrote about the Big 12 wanting to replace the Cotton on the B12 pecking order with the Alamo Bowl, it sounds like the Big 12 wants to separate themselves from Cowboys Stadium and find someone else to take that spot in January, primarily San Antonio and the Alamo Bowl as the best non-BCS spot for a Big 12 school.

Hello Jim Delany and Barry Alvarez, are you paying attention?

Now, this idea does have some demerits upon itself. First and foremost, it would be another game versus the Southeastern Conference, primarily a SEC West opponent. To take your conferences second or third place team and put them possibly against the likes of Texas A&M, LSU, Mississippi and such.

It's not like the Big 12 has been successful in the Cotton lately, as the SEC opponent has won 9 out of the last 10 contests.

However, it would be the perfect avenue to get rid of the Florida overtones of the current B1G tie in's. While being everyone's favorite bowl twitter to follow, the Capital One Bowl is held in a aging stadium that has very little chance to improve.

As far as California goes, the Holiday Bowl, while having a very ideal locale in San Diego, is held in Qualcomm Stadium, an aging place that has the charm of a retired nuclear reactor in northern Siberia.

If the conference lost either one of the other Texas tie-in bowls to gain the Cotton, I would think that's a fair trade. The Heart of Dallas bowl is a good job, good effort type of bowl that isn't working out in the old Cotton Bowl in Fair Park south of Dallas, and the Meineke Car Care Bowl just hasn't seemed to gain traction, even with being in a great place as Reliant Stadium in Houston should be doing better. Furthermore, it sounds from the first day of meetings that Houston is out of the rotation.

Not only does the payout, worthwhile for a non-BCS bowl ($3.675 million) make it worthy, but it is the only game on at the time, on a primetime spot on Fox Sports, who has done the B1G well with the BTN.

Plus, to think of the Texas recruiting opportunities that happen to come with, and it's such a good idea for the Big Ten that it's virtually impossible to ignore.

Should all the Florida bowl games be ditched? Of course not. However, there's no reason to think it isn't worthwhile to pursue.