Orange Bowl Again A Weak Matchup

MIAMI (CBSMiami.com) – The Discover Orange Bowl has suffered for several years as bad teams continue to appear in the bowl.

This season is no different as the ACC Champion Clemson Tigers will play the Big East co-champion West Virginia Mountaineers in the 2012 Orange Bowl.

The matchup is the worst in terms of BCS rankings of the two teams heading into the game.

Clemson earned its automatic bid by knocking off the Virginia Tech Hokies in the ACC Championship game last Saturday.

West Virginia was the best of the bad teams in the Big East and got into the BCS by having the highest BCS ranking of any Big East team.

The Tigers of Clemson had national championship hopes just a few weeks ago when the team was 8-0.

However, as conference play got tougher for the Tigers, they lost three of the next four games, before knocking off the Hokies in the ACC title game.

In recent years, poor ticket sales and television ratings have plagued the Orange Bowl.

The game has a storied history of deciding national championships and has featured some of the best teams to ever play.

From crowning the national champion Florida State Seminoles in 1994 to an epic triple overtime game between Bobby Bowden's Seminoles and Joe Paterno's Penn State Nittany Lions in 2006, the Orange Bowl has bowl history second-to-none.

Last season, the game saw Stanford thump Virginia Tech by a score of 40-12. The game was one of the first glimpses of just how good Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck would become.

But, as the bowl became more aligned with the Big East and the ACC, and both leagues have been far removed from the national championship race, the game has lost a lot of its luster.

The Discover Orange Bowl is set for January 4th, 2012 with an 8 p.m. kickoff. All Bowl Championship Series games, including the Orange Bowl, will be seen on ESPN.