Rating the Humanitarian Bowl: It's here. It's cold. Get used to it.

Bowls: There are a lot of them. As a public service, the Doc is here to rank each game according to five crucial criteria, with help from the patron saint of the game in question. Today: The Humanitarian Bowl!

Teams. Fresno State Bulldogs (8-4) vs. Northern Illinois Huskies (10-3).
Particulars. Dec. 18 (Today), 5:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Patron Saint. Alsatian humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, a noted theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, missionary, Nobel Peace Prize winner and bearer of one of the great mustaches of the 20th Century.

• Locale. On one hand, playing on the infamous blue turf of college football's most celebrated rags-to-riches story gives two similarly nondescript programs something to aspire to. On the other hand, today's forecast is overcast with a 28-degree wind chill and a 90 percent chance of snow. On the other hand, the wind chill in DeKalb, Ill., is currently one degree Farenheit, so Husky fans should take what they can get.
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• Tradition. The Humanitarian hasn't featured a ranked team since No. 19 Boston College (led by obscure an sophomore quarterback, Matt Ryan) handed Boise State its only home loss of the last decade in 2005 – the second of a three-year stint in which it was ignominiously known as the MPC Computers Bowl, before the Idaho-based company took a nosedive into bankruptcy – but five of the last six games here have come down to the final possession, including the best finish in Humanitarian history last year between Idaho and Bowling Green:

If the game is looking for a new tradition that will attract viewers and offbeat prestige, it should fly Robb Akey and his Sgt. Slaughter voice in to serve as the official postage interview of the Humanitarian Bowl on an annual basis, whether Idaho is playing or not. Until it does, notoriety is bound to languish.
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More 2010 Bowl Ratings
• Dec. 17: New Mexico Bowl

• Swag. In addition to a "gift suite" from Sony and a commemorative football, players will leave Boise with perhaps the most climate-appropriate gift bag of the entire postseason, including a skull cap, waterproof parka, winter gloves and hand warmers. I just hope they handed most of that out before the game.
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• Sponsors, trophies and other ambiance. New sponsor alert! After a decade of underwriting by doomed dot-com startups (Crucial.com, MPC Computers) and a chain of truck stops (Roady's), this year's Humanitarian Bowl will brought to you by a title sponsor that manages to combine the two: Meet uDrove, a smart phone-like application created last year by the Internet Truckstop to provide "a simple, easy-to-use tool that allows truck drivers to keep a driver log, track mileage for tax purposes, record fuel and business expenses and even complete a vehicle inspection and proof of delivery." Northrop Grumman, it ain't, but at least it deserves a point for, uh, continuity?
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• This year's match-up. Besides providing a canine theme worthy of a Jack London novel (or a Michael Vick house party), the Huskies and Bulldogs should deliver the most competent collision of the opening weekend: Both finished at least four games above .500, both beat outfits from "Big Six" conferences at home, and all seven losses between them came at the hands of either a) A "Big Six" opponent on the road, or b) The eventual champion(s) of their respective conferences.

Where Fresno was clearly the fourth-best team in the WAC (behind top-25 co-champs Boise State, Hawaii and Nevada), Northern Illinois was just as clearly the best team in the MAC throughout the season, hammering conference opponents by more than four touchdowns per game over the course of a nine game winning streak – good enough to sneak into the bottom of the polls at 10-2 before being stunned by Miami (Ohio) in the MAC title game. In retrospect, considering only one of its in-conference victims (Toledo) is in a bowl game itself, NIU still has a lot to prove, and will have to prove it without head coach Jerry Kill, who's already moved on to Minnesota.
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• Star power. Both offenses are relatively old-school attacks powered by mighty mite running backs, 5-foot-9 Chad Spann (NIU) and 5-foot-7 Robbie Rouse (Fresno), each of whom went over 1,000 yards on a regimen of 20-carry afternoons highlighted by a couple big games. Most notably, Spann ripped Minnesota for 223 yards on two touchdowns on just 15 carries in September, one of his six 100-yard games on the season, and Rouse turned in back-to-back 200-yard efforts against Louisiana Tech and Nevada. Let's hear some love from the zone stretch fans!
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Final rating: out of five.
The snow may provide some novelty, and the teams are well-coached. But really, there's only so much you can do with ground-based also-rans from the WAC and MAC.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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