The 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl will feature a red hot team in the Oklahoma Sooners and a team coming off and upset and knocked out of the national championship game in the West Virginia Mountaineers. I don’t like this matchup because West Virginia is over rated. The team is extremely talented with Pat White and Steve Slayton but the only quality team they have played are South Florida, Cincinnati and Rutgers only of whom South Florida ranked in the top 10. I still do not know how South Florida ranked so high.
West Virginia struggled in both it’s losses and manged only 13 points in it’s first loss and only 7 points in it’s second loss. Their final score in the second loss was 9 points but 2 points came to a safety give to them to end the game. Pat White is also injured but should have enough time to recover before the bowl game. Slayton however is a different story as he only managed 13 attempts for 54 yards against South Florida and a horrible 9 attempts for 11 yards against Pittsburgh. The Mountaineers just cannot throw to win a game and against a daunting Oklahoma defense, this game might be over quickly.
Oklahoma is a 2 loss team but could really be considered a 1 loss team as it lost it’s quarterback in a set back to Texas Tech. There other loss was a let down to Colorado before the big game between the Texas Loghorns. Sam Bradford is back, Allen Patrick is running as well as he has been, and the Oklahoma defense is picking it up. Oklahoma has been beating teams in a dominating fashion and should have no trouble stopping Pat White. The lack of a great throwing game should allow the Sooner defense to focus on stopping White and Slayton from running all over them which should lead to an easy victory for the Sooners. Rich Rodriguez better have his team ready to play because he is not facing a South Florida, UConn, Pittsburgh, or Rutgers defense but are playing a very tough Sooners defense that can play against some of the higher power offenses.
The 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl will be fun to watch as long as Oklahoma does not kill West Virginia. I would have rather seen Oklahoma versus Virginia Tech and Kansas versus West Virginia. That would be two hot dominating teams who both won their conference championships playing against each other and two teams with let downs for the national title playing each other with something to prove.