Dawgs miss out on bowl after loss

Rob Ludwig

November 19, 2008 02:53 am

— In an ironically sad way, Navarro College’s pain of not receiving a bowl bid in 2008 might remove potential anguish of another team in a similar situation in the future.
Navarro spent seven weeks as the No. 1 team in the nation and defeated five ranked teams this season. But a loss in the final week of the season, a 49-24 decision to Blinn in the Southwest Junior College Football Conference postseason championship game, came at the wrong time.
Instead of taking their 10-1 record bowling, the Bulldogs will take a couple of extra days with their families at Thanksgiving and then have a few more hours to cram for finals.
After analyzing the situation for three weeks, Navarro Athletic Director Roark Montgomery says Navarro was the odd team out in a bowl system that needs desperate revamping.
“Unfortunately, we are going to end up the scapegoat that hopefully will cause changes in the spring to our bowl situation,” Montgomery said. “We just lost at the wrong time of the year.
“I talked with (NJCAA Executive Director) Wayne Baker earlier (Tuesday) and we agreed that this situation is something we need to look at when we are at the national meeting in Providence in the spring.”
One solution that has been floated in recent weeks is the possibility of a playoff system similar to what the NCAA Division II utilizes. Good idea, but it’s impractical since community colleges rarely have budgets or staff that can send teams across the country during an eight-team, three-week playoff.
“I just don’t see junior colleges having the funds to allow their teams to go to Snow (Utah) one week, Copperas Cove (Texas) the next and then Iowa or Arizona for the championship,” Montgomery said.
The ideal solution is to keep the present system, but somehow find sponsors and communities to host additional bowl games. The NJCAA lost the Golden Isles Classic Bowl in Georgia three years ago, the Dalton Defenders Bowl in Kansas last year and the Pilgrim’s Pride Bowl in Mount Pleasant in July.
Of those three bowls, likely the only one that will return soon will be the Dalton Defenders Bowl. That event was cancelled after flooding in the Coffeyville, Kan. area severely damaged the hotels in the area.
For now, Navarro will be sitting at home while College of DuPage (6-5) and a pair of 7-3 teams will be at the Graphic Edge Bowl doubleheader in Cedar Falls, Iowa. And Lackawanna, Pa. (7-3) will face off with Rochester CTC, Minn. (7-2) at the North Star Bowl in Rochester.
Prior to the SWJCFC championship game last Saturday, Montgomery had been communicating with officials of the Valley of the Sun Bowl in Phoenix, Ariz., the C.H.A.M.P.S. Heart of Texas Bowl in Copperas Cove and the brand new Mississippi Bowl in Biloxi, Miss. Montgomery also talked with then-No. 2 Snow College about its Top of the Mountains Bowl, but the consensus at Navarro was that if the Bulldogs had defeated Blinn, it would go to the Heart of Texas Bowl with its No. 1 ranking and likely play No. 3 Butler.
Officials from the Mississippi Bowl, Heart of Texas Bowl and the Valley of the Sun Bowl all expressed a lot of interest in Navarro traveling to their venues, regardless if they lost to Blinn two weeks after defeating the Bucs in Brenham.
On Sunday evening after Butler County won the Jayhawk Conference crown, things started to unravel quickly. As late as mid-Monday morning, it still looked as if the Bulldogs would be headed to Biloxi.
But then Georgia Military, which lost 25-13 to Navarro earlier in the season, opted not to play a Texas team for the third time this season and jilted Blinn at the Heart of Texas Bowl for Mississippi.
“The bottom line is that when Georgia Military decided to go to the Mississippi Bowl, it shifted everything,” Montgomery said. “We ended up with four teams and three bowl spots and Navarro was the odd team out.”
Fort Scott, Kan., (8-2) which had already committed to play in the North Star Bowl, jumped at the chance to play Blinn in Copperas Cove. Meanwhile, the Valley of the Sun Bowl had made a deal to bring in Harper College, Ill (10-1) to face home team Phoenix College (7-3).
That left Navarro without a postseason home. North Star Bowl officials inquired about Navarro’s interest in heading north, but the doubleheader of games is scheduled for Nov. 22. And their opponent was unclear after Fort Scott bolted. Having been told no by several colleges, the North Star Bowl doubleheader is now a single game.
“They talked to Glendale (Ariz), Trinity Valley and Eastern Arizona. They were trying to get anybody up there,” Montgomery said. “That would have been a $30,000 trip with no hotel rooms guaranteed and no time to watch film and make a gameplan. If it were in Athens, it would be a different issue.
“We had options with Mississippi, Texas and Phoenix. They all wanted us to come. And then when the president at Georgia Military indicated it would make more financial sense for them to go to Mississippi, everything changed.”
There is another bottom line, one that is likely a sore point around the Navarro coaching offices and the locker room. If Navarro had beaten Blinn for the fourth straight time last Saturday, all of the bowl quandary would have disappeared and the Bulldogs would be playing Butler, Kan. for the national title two hours south in Copperas Cove.
“That’s what it really comes down to,” Montgomery said. “We just lost at the wrong time. It’s a very sad situation for a great young coaching staff and a group of fine young men who have represented Navarro College well this year. To win 10 straight games and be ranked No. 1 for seven weeks, you would think we would be playing a bowl game. We just had one too few bowl games in (2008). We hope this won’t happen again to a team like Navarro in the future.”

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