Just two more victories and our beloved Beavers will have crawled out of the muck and mud of mediocrity and thrown themselves, gasping for breath, grasping at straws, onto the shores of six-six-success. Bowl Eligibility! Another season saved! Now, on to the New Mexico Bowl to do battle against the mighty Lobos. What? The Pac-12 contract with the New Mexico Bowl doesn't take effect until 2012? And the Lobos, on whose Albuquerque campus the New Mexico Bowl takes place, will be staying home for Christmas anyway, given their one-win season? Drat.

Well, no matter. There are other bowls. Lots of them. Thirty-five at last count. Room for 70 teams to display their football prowess to legions of fans on TV and in the stands. Somewhere out there is a bowl for our Beavers. Maaco? Chick-fil-A? Little Caesars? Kraft Foods? Beef 'O' Brady's? What auto repair shop or fine food purveyor will have the honor of hosting our Beavers this year?

Enough of the sarcasm. Let's get real. There are only a dozen or so bowls that matter, because only the top 25 teams, not the top 70, have played well enough to earn the privilege of appearing in a bowl game. Many years ago, 6-6 teams turned down bowl invitations, because they accepted the fact that they were not worthy of post-season play. Nowadays, there are far too many bowls in which middling teams contest little more than their mutual futility on the field.