Friday Lunchtime Thoughts: Solich & Ohio in the BCS

Sports Illustrated's Holly Anderson says that the Ohio Bobcats are not only her pick to win the MAC, but also could be a candidate to sneak into the BCS this year. That's right...Frank Solich's team is the consensus pick to win the MAC, and if they can knock off Penn State next Saturday, could set themselves up for a run as a BCS buster.

Can you imagine the carnage in some circles (I'm thinking the BRB insiders still cloistered in their parents' basement, holding seances to channel Bill Callahan here...) if Solich gets Ohio to a BCS bowl.  More seriously, does that put additional pressure on Bo Pelini if the Huskers can't get to a BCS bowl this season?

Best answer to that is to remove all doubt and win this year.  Then hopefully we'll see both the Huskers and the Bobcats in BCS bowl games.  (Preferably not the same, unless it's the second game in Miami...)  (H/T to NET/BTN's Kevin Kugler for this one.)

Well, we're four weeks from the apparent kickoff of the Omaha Nighthawks season, and can't you buy tickets yet, we still don't even know where the games will be played.  We know that the Nighthawks have started to hold tryout camps, so something is definitely happening.  But can the Nighthawks actually pull everything together in the time remaining? Five weeks ago, they announced they were playing and now halfway to the season opener, we still don't have any idea where or how to get tickets.

If you were looking for a plan to show the people of Omaha this is going to work out long term, well, this ain't it.

The rumor mill is heating up over at MavPuck that a new arena announcement for Nebraska-Omaha could be forthcoming in the next couple of months.  Many UNO fans are ecstatic with the news; I'm more concerned than enthusiastic at this point.  I've grow increasingly concerned that UNO is building an arena for the wrong reasons:  escape MECA and downsize capacity.  Downsizing capacity means fewer hockey fans paying more to attend games.  That's a huge negative to me.

Maybe UNO has figured out a solution to build an appropriately sized arena (10,000 capacity) without fleecing Maverick fans.  But I'm skeptical because the rumor mill hasn't indicated that the past plans for a too-small arena have been fixed.  The devil is in the details, of course.  I simply don't find news of a UNO arena to be "good" or "positive" until I finally hear that UNO isn't just building whatever they might be able to afford.  When UNO hockey is averaging 8,000 fans a game downtown, who in their right mind thinks a 7,500 seat arena is sufficient?  (Ooh!  Ahhh!  Smaller than the Knights place!)