Capital One Bowl

The Georgia Bulldogs will meet the Michigan State Spartans on New Years Day in the newest edition of the Capital One Bowl. Bowl officials selected Georgia over Ole Miss, and Michigan State over Northwestern and Iowa. It will be a match-up of the Southeastern Conference against the Big Ten Conference. Both the Bulldogs as well as the Spartans are 9-3. The two teams last met in the Gator Bowl on January 1, 1989, in a game Georgia faithful remember as Vince Dooley's last game as Bulldog head coach. The Dawgs defeated the Spartans 34-27. This year's game will feature two of the country's premier running backs in State's Javon Ringer and Georgia's Knowshon Moreno. The Capital One Bowl has the largest payout of any non-BCS bowl at $4.75 million per team. After finishing last season at 7-6, Michigan State looks at the Capital One Bowl as a step forward in their rebuilding process. As for Georgia, after going into this season with visions of playing in the National Championship game, this invitation might seem somewhat of a letdown. However, if I were the Bulldogs, I would be elated to be going to the Capital One Bowl after the way they played the second half of the year. That is the reason the bowl looked so hard at Ole Miss, because they finished the season so much stronger than did Georgia. With that said, it will be interesting to see if Mark Richt can have his troops regrouped and playing more aggressively and with more discipline by New Years Day.