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 Insight Bowl! Teams. Iowa Hawkeyes (7-5) vs. Missouri Tigers (10-2).
Particulars. Dec. 28 (Today), 10 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Favorite: Missouri (–2½)
Patron Saint: Nineteenth-century Iowa tailback Frank "Kinney" Holbrook, whose presence on the field in 1896 elicited violent racial epithets from the Missouri crowd, a hostile divide that eventually ended the Missouri-Iowa border series for a century. Two years earlier, the game in Columbia had ended in a fracas that resulted in the entire audience swarming the field, "players being struck with canes and fists" and some Iowa players being placed under arrest. After the near-riot over Holbrook's appearance in 1896 forced a Missouri forfeit, university officials resolved to avoid any further scenes by banning black players at Rollins Field altogether.
Fourteen years later, in 1910, Iowa coach Jesse Hawley reluctantly agreed to sit out another black player, tackle Archie Alexander, at Missouri's insistence. After his team lost another violent road trip, 5-0, Hawley promised Iowa would never play Missouri again – and so it hasn't, until tonight, 100 years later.
• Locale. The Insight is one of only two bowls (along with the Armed Forces Bowl) hosted by an on-campus venue, and Sun Devil Stadium is no joke: Besides enduring decades of manic performances by Arizona State and outright suckitude by the Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals, it's been the site of 36 Fiesta Bowls, five de facto national championship games, a Super Bowl, a USFL franchise that merged with another USFL franchise, a papal visit, a presidential address by President Obama and at least six major motion pictures.
Iowa-Missouri? Eh. It's seen better. Just take it easy on the stomping, huh? It still needs a little work done.
• Tradition. In its own way, the path of the Insight Bowl is a window into the fundamental shifts of the evolving American economy over the last quarter century: The game began life in 1989 as the Copper Bowl, and from 1991-95 was sponsored by a hardware company, a paean to the fading 20th Century vision of getting stuff out of the ground, making stuff out of it, and selling that stuff. By 1997, the "Copper" title and its hardy corporate overlord had been replaced by a local technology startup, Insight Enterprises, and the game became the first to ride the dot-com boom when it was rechristened as the Insight.com Bowl.
The 'dot-com' part was ditched along with the bursting of the initial tech bubble in 2001, so that the game now represents – rather than a Web site – a penetrating mental vision or discernment and the faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth. It also hosted four games in five years in which the teams combined for more than 80 points from 2003-07, including the greatest comeback in bowl history, Texas Tech's 2006 rally from 38-7 down in the third quarter to beat Minnesota in overtime, 44-41.
• Swag. The "gear" is nice enough – a Tourneau watch, a cap, a backpack – but the gift bag will be made or broken by the contents of the Sony "gift suite." If it includes a PlayStation3 Move, that's a five-Frank gift bag right there. If it's a Blu-ray copy of "Ishtar," yeah, not so much.
• Sponsors, trophies and other ambiance. The Insight is the first of three Phoenix-area bowl games in a 14-day span, joining the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1 and the BCS title game on Jan. 10 for a tripleheader that reportedly generated $401.7 million for the state, 3,576 jobs and $10.1 million in state and local taxes when the championship was here in 2006-07 – and this year's number is expected to be even higher. In the meantime, while the locals are cleaning up, the schools are going into the red to get there.
• This year's match-up. Frankly, the entertainment value and competitiveness depends on which version of Iowa shows up: The Hawkeyes that started the year in the top 10, raced out to a 7-2 start and trounced unbeaten Michigan State establish its presence in the crowded Rose Bowl race down the stretch, or the one that dropped three in a row to close the regular season and finds itself in a state of disarray? Since blowing out the Spartans, the Hawkeyes have struggled to survive an upset bid from Indiana; blown fourth quarter leads to Northwestern, Ohio State and lowly Minnesota to finish 7-5; lost the school's career receiving leader to a drug bust; officially lost two top running backs; and may have send another packing after their leading rusher – already suspended for the bowl – was arrested for marijuana possession on Monday night.
Still: Iowa can play defense, and hasn't lost a game by more than seven points in three years. The Hawkeyes have more than proven they can hang with the No. 14 team in the country; if they're flat, though, Missouri isn't about to be undone by a team just going through the motions.
• Star power. The headliners may be the quarterbacks, Ricky Stanzi (Iowa) and Blaine Gabbert (Missouri), but they're going to be harassed by two of the most hyped pass rushers in the country, Adrian Clayborn and Aldon Smith. Both turned in relatively down years after dominating turns in 2009, in part because of the excessive attention paid to the by opposing offenses (Smith also missed three games with an arm injury after a killer start against Illinois, and wasn't quite the same after his return). But they're also both pegged as future first-round talents and have more ability to take over the game than anyone on the field.
Final rating: out of five.
Both teams spent most of the season in the top 20, and were in the top 15 on Halloween with the heads of top-10 victims (Oklahoma; Michigan State) on their walls. Missouri regained that form in November, after a two-game slide that cost it the Big 12 North. If Iowa can somehow resurrect it in the absence of its leading rusher and receiver, this is a Jan. 1-caliber affair.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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