So, the Bears are finally eligible for a bowl game.  But where are we going bowling?  I know I’d like to get started on planning my holiday vacation.  Being a computer nerd, I decided to whip up a small computer program to simulate the rest of the Pac-10 season and then determine the odds of Cal landing in each bowl location — or, Tedford forbid, the possibility of missing bowl season altogether!  Anyway, here’s what I found out.

First of all, one interesting tidbit that I’ve heard is that the Emerald Bowl is extremely interested in hosting the Bears.  Some ‘inside’ information, courtesy of Erin Proudfoot:

- Both the Emerald and Las Vegas bowls get either the #4 or #5 Pac-10 team.  He told me that these two bowls switch off every year as to which gets to pick first and it’s the Emerald Bowl’s turn this year.  They really want us - so they would probably pick us if we were EITHER #4 or #5.  IF THIS IS TRUE, we ain’t going to Vegas. 

- $40 face value tickets in the view section are being sold at a group discount until Nov. 30 - 25 or more tickets for $25 each with no service charges except $5 shipping.  I don’t know where the Cal section would be.

That’s fine with me; I didn’t really want to go to Las Vegas anyway.  Anyway, to refresh your memories, here’s the Pac-10’s current bowl partnerships:

1st : Rose - BCS (Pasadena, CA)
2nd : Holiday (San Diego, CA)
3rd : Sun (El Paso, TX)
4th : Emerald (San Francisco, CA)
5th : Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV)
6th : Armed Forces (Ft. Worth, TX)

To make my predictions a little simpler, I made a few assumptions about bowl season.  Everything I assumed is stuff I would regard as 90% or more likely to happen, so we’ll call it 100% to make it easier on ourselves.

Assumptions:

- Oregon will make a BCS game if they win two of their next three (they’re high enough in the standings that I think they can afford another loss).

- If either USC or Arizona State win out, they will also make a BCS game.

- Since Cal has been to San Diego two of the past three years, the Holiday Bowl will pass on Cal if they have the choice.

- Since the Emerald really wants Cal, any 4th or 5th place tie will send the Bears across the Bay for the bowl season.  Thus, I give Cal a 0% chance of landing in Las Vegas.

- Having no special reason for or against us, the Sun and Armed Forces are rather indifferent, and all tied teams would have an equal shot at landing in that bowl game.  Thus, if we tie for 3rd with one other team, we would have a 50% shot of landing in the Sun, and a 50% shot at falling to the Emerald.

Methodology:

This section is for numbers nerds only; if you don’t care how I came up with these percentages, skip to the ‘Results’ section below.

First, I found some gamblers’ power ratings online.  These are the numbers used to calculate the point spread of games, and I figured they would help give me an accurate picture of how likely each team would be to win each game.  Using the power ratings, I projected what the point spread would be for each remaining game involving a Pac-10 team.  I then crafted a crude mathematical relationship between the size of the point spread and the odds that the favorite would win the game (basically a linear function).

Given these odds, I then went and simulated the likelihood of each combination of outcomes for games involving Pac-10 teams, coming up with around 65,000 different combinations.  Matching the likelihood of each combination with the bowl destination for Cal that such a combination would produce, I then added all these tiny percentages up.  Simple, right?

Results:

Emerald - 53.6% - This is the most common result for Cal.  It’s actually surprisingly likely; with 3 games left to play, I would consider any result that is over 35% to be abnormally large.  Still, it’s not quite large enough to warrant running out and purchasing your BART tickets yet.

Sun - 30.72% - The next most likely result, this is the only other destination with a good chance of occurring.  I have no idea how interested the Sun Bowl is in Cal, but I will note that in its 73-year history, Cal is the only Pac-10 team to never have played in the Sun Bowl.

Holiday - 7.14% - I like San Diego, but I have a feeling that the Holiday Bowl organizers would like a different team this year.  However, if Cal wins out and both Oregon and ASU make BCS games, this is probably where we’d end up.

No Bowl - 4.39% - Conversely, if Cal loses out, they may not make a bowl game at all.  Of course, this scenario also requires one of the bottom 4 teams (Arizona, Stanford, Washington and Washington State) to make a miracle run, win out, and get bowl eligible.  I wouldn’t worry about this one too much.

Armed Forces - 4.08% - 6th place in the Pac-10, or 7th place with two teams in the BCS.  Another ‘not likely, don’t worry about it’ scenario.

Rose - 0.04% - How you like them Rose Bowl odds?  Yeah, not good.  Beat USC and then worry about it.

BCS at-large - 0.03% - Even slimmer than our Rose Bowl chances.  This scenario requires Cal to win out and finish in 2nd place.  They would have 9 wins, and I *think* they would get to the top-14 in the BCS standings, but I can’t even be sure of that.  Again, this is nothing to worry about.

Las Vegas - 0.00% - As I discussed above, I think the Emerald would take us if Cal were 4th OR 5th, so I think we have no shot at landing in Las Vegas.  Oh well.