Dear Poinsettia Bowl,

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are Boise State fans, the greatest, most knowledgeable fans this side of the Mississippi (the "Whose House" guy excluded). We love our Broncos like we love our own children, and more so than the disappointing, emo ones. We are loud, we are proud, and we are going to be inextricably tied to you for the next fifteen days.

Hope you're okay with that.

We thought we'd write this letter so that you can get to know us a little better and to understand where we're coming from. To be honest, you are not our first choice. If bowl season were the prom, our first choice for a date would have gone with another guy based on some archaic ranking system, despite the fact that she had perhaps the greatest moment of her life with us just a couple years ago. Or was that the greatest moment of our lives? Either way, we wanted to experience that again, but instead, we'll be spending the holidays wrapped in your San Diego County Credit Union-approved arms (member FDIC).

We've learned to deal with this. You will never be the Fiesta Bowl or the Sugar Bowl or the Orange Bowl (as it were, you are quite a bit better than the Orange Bowl), so there's no point wasting our breath in trying to make you something that you aren't. You are the Poinsettia Bowl - a bowl game we did not even know existed until a couple months ago.

People say nice enough things about you, like "The Poinsettia Bowl is Holiday Bowl Lite." If that's anything like Snapple Lite, then we're in for a treat.

Plus, we get a decent opponent to play against in TCU. The Horned Frogs are nationally ranked, respected across the country, and a tough, Top 25 squad. Sure beats going toe to toe with Virginia Tech, or worse, Ball State.

You'll be shown on ESPN in front of a national audience two days before Christmas. Your stadium holds 70,000 people. Sea World is down the street. If we had to pick a non-BCS bowl game to play in, we probably could not have done any better than picking you.

The only problem is that we didn't want to have to pick a non-BCS bowl game. The Broncos deserved to be bowling with the big boys, not proving themselves one more time against a peer. In case you can't tell, we're still having trouble getting over this. Hopefully, by December 23, we will be sold out for supporting you, Poinsettia Bowl, but in the meantime, you can expect at least a few more moments of grief and bitterness.

We are Bronco fans, after all. We want what's best for our team, and it doesn't get much better than a BCS game. We'll root hard for Boise State, we'll fill your hotel rooms and take your ticket allotments. But no matter how special and rewarding you make the bowl game experience, we will always wonder "what if."

No offense.

Sincerely,
OBNUG