Mixed blessing?

So once again my alma mater will play in a bowl game. Northwestern is in the Outback Bowl in Tampa, FL, on Jan. 1. The Wildcats play the Auburn Tigers. Which probably means we won't be breaking our streak of bowl losses anytime soon.

But it's a New Year's Day bowl game, even if it is named after a restaurant. The Outback Bowl began life as the Hall of Fame Bowl in 1986 as a late December bowl game. (There was a Hall of Fame Bowl beginning in 1975, but it specifically matched small schools against each other and didn't have much of a profile). It switched to the January set the next year and has been there ever since. It's been the Outback Bowl since 1994.

We'll just have to see if this will be the game where we Northwestern alums get to stop saying, "Northwestern University: Losing bowl games -- and graduating the people who run the companies you work for -- since 1949."