The BBVA Compass Bowl is that one bowl game that is stuck in the middle of all of these fantastic games that just doesn't seem to make all that much sense. Neither the Pitt Panthers nor the SMU Mustangs were truly all that great this year, and they are clearly teams that are heading in opposite directions coming into this one.
SMU is definitely going the wrong way. It did have a win this year against the TCU Horned Frogs on the road, a victory that looks a whole heck of a lot better right now than it did even when it happened. However, it also only beat the Tulane Green Wave and Rice Owls over the course of the last month and a half of the season, and there were some bad, bad losses thrown in there as well.
Head Coach June Jones looked like he was on his way out the door just a few weeks ago when the Arizona State Sun Devils were courting him, and we wouldn't have blamed him had he left. His quarterback situation was supposed to be solved with QB Kyle Padron, but his career has digressed so much that he was benched at the outset of the season in favor of QB JJ McDermott, and now, he has to go into this bowl game with RB Zach Line in street clothes and no other truly viable running backs.
Ironically, it was Pittsburgh's Head Coach Todd Graham who ended up taking the ASU job. It was a lateral move at best, and it was one that didn't make a lot of sense for a man that had only taken the Pitt job 11 months ago after the horrible hiring of Mike Haywood that only lasted a matter of a few weeks before the offseason really even got started.
The Panthers have their injury problems, especially at tailback where RB Ray Graham is certainly out and RB Zach Brown hasn't played since the first half of the Backyard Brawl against the West Virginia Mountaineers.
What we do know about U-Pitt though, is that it has fought and fought hard, covering five straight games down the stretch, winning the game that it had to against the Syracuse Orange just to make it to a bowl, and coming here full of gusto, looking for the win.
The team might be on its fifth coach in a span of just 13 months in the days following the end of this bowl game, but the Panthers are still 3.5 point favorites to get through the adversity. The 'total' on the BBVA Compass Bowl odds is set at 47 at Bookmaker.eu.
