A big bowl of bizarre

Well, now. This is different.

And by "different" I mean, "Dang, the world sure looks different when you stand on your head," and also "Dang, Robert E. Lee riding naked to meet Grant at Appomattox? That's sure different than the history I was taught!"

Which is to say, all your minor bowl assignments were handed out yesterday.

Some folks drew a Radial Tire bowl, some drew a Chicken Sandwich bowl, and some drew a Plumbing Fixture/Lending Institution/Car Wash bowl.

And then there was Notre Dame and Indiana.

Indiana, after an 8-4 season that's its best since Bill Clinton was in the White House, will play Tennessee on Jan. 2 in the Gator Bowl, which used to be a minor bowl but now is a kinda/sorta big-boy bowl.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, will play Iowa State on Dec. 28 in something called the Camping World Bowl.

Don't know what sort of bowl swag the Fighting Irish will score from that one. Bug spray, perhaps.  State-of-the-art pup tents with fine Corinthian leather interiors. Something.

In any event, whipping up the appropriate lore for this one figures to be a hard case even for the master lore-crafters from South Bend. Especially when Indiana, of all people, actually landed in a better bowl than Norte Dame did.

That is, yes, different. Like who-thought-we'd-ever-see-that different.

First of all, this is a Notre Dame team that actually won two more games than Indiana, even if seven of its ten wins came against unranked opponents. It's also Notre Dame. And Indiana is Indiana.

One has lore and tradition and straight-up mythology so deep you could drown in it. The other has Harry Gonso and John Isenbarger and Hey, remember that time we won the Copper Bowl?

Yet it's Indiana that got more respect from the bowl people, a clear indication that the bowl people thought rather highly of the Big Ten this season. And, well, not so highly of the ACC, of which Notre Dame football is a quasi-member no matter what it says.

Almost half its games, after all, were against ACC opponents. So it figures the Irish might have been tarred with the ACC brush when it came to handing out the bowl bids.

And yet ... it's Notre Dame. Who knew there'd ever be a day when the Fighting Irish would land in a less glamorous bowl game than Indiana?

Strange days. Strange days, indeed.