December 31st, 2009 12:00 PM ET<\/strong><\/p>\n Amon G. Carter Stadium, Fort Worth, Texas<\/strong><\/p>\n History<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Apparently they use an F-15 for a Football in this one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Created in 2003, the Armed Forces Bowl was originally called the Fort Worth Bowl for unsurprising reasons.\u00a0 The Bowl started under the sponsorship of PlainsCapital Bank and continued until 2005 when no corporate sponsor was available for the game.\u00a0 In 2006 Bell Helicopter Textron \u2013 a Fort Worth company \u2013 took over sponsorship and renamed the game the Armed Forces Bowl that we know and love today.<\/p>\n The products of Bell Helicopter should be familiar to most people.\u00a0 You have probably seen this<\/a> unique flying machine.\u00a0 Bell also produces a large number of civilian helicopters making it likely that if you see a medical or news chopper, it has likely been produced by Bell.<\/p>\n This game started out as a matchup between the Big 12 and the Mountain West, but the Big 12 didn\u2019t end up sending a team until the third year of the Bowl when Kansas managed to fill the spot.\u00a0 The previous two years had a WAC school and then a C-USA school replacing the Big 12.\u00a0 The only year the Mountain West failed to send a team to this game was 2004 when former MAC school Marshall faced off against Cincinnati.<\/p>\n The most interesting matchup for the Armed Forces bowl was the very first one played.\u00a0 Boise State faced off against TCU (sound familiar?) in 2003 which the Broncos walked away from with a 34-31 victory.\u00a0 That was the only other time (other than last season) that these two teams have faced each other.\u00a0 The Fiesta Bowl gets more exciting with every passing day!<\/p>\n Ok, that\u2019s about as much enthusiasm as I can inject into that travesty of a BCS bowl selection.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get back to the game at hand.<\/p>\n Houston<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Houston is one of those incredibly unoriginal schools. Who isn't called the cougars?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Early on this season Houston was easily generating the most excitement from fans of the \u201cLet Chaos Ensue\u201d strategy of eliminating the BCS.\u00a0 Two games in a row Houston was able to knock off a member of the Big 12 conference.\u00a0 The first was then number 5 Oklahoma State who they beat by 10.\u00a0 The second was then unranked Texas Tech by one point scored in the last seconds of the game.\u00a0 After that, however, things started to go a little sour.<\/p>\n The next week, UTEP hung 58 on Houston en route to a 17 point beating at UTEP.\u00a0 Houston recovered from this and won their next 5, though having lost much of the prestige they had earned in the first 3 games.\u00a0 A 5 point loss at UCF in mid-November knocked Houston out of the minds of the average College Football fan, and that was followed a couple weeks later by a loss at East Carolina by 6.\u00a0 Along the way, Houston did manage to take out up-and-comer Southern Methodist (you know them as SMU, or, better yet, those cheaters that got the death penalty) by a score of 38-15.\u00a0 It\u2019s not often you see a June Jones team get mauled by 23.\u00a0 Oh, wait<\/a>\u2026almost forgot.<\/p>\n Case Keenum, the Real Superman Quarterback.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Houston is lead by a Quarterback who everyone has heard about in discussions of the Heisman Trophy, but probably got shafted by not being invited.\u00a0 Case Keenum had a spectacular rating of 159.3 with a 71% completion percentage on 659 throws for 5449 yards, 43 touchdowns and only 9 interceptions.\u00a0 Read those stats again, I\u2019ll wait.\u00a0 Those are the kinds of stats that are usually put up by \u201csystem quarterbacks\u201d, and perhaps Keenum is one of those, but he is still very very good at what he does.\u00a0 He\u2019s certainly no Reggie Ball<\/a>.<\/p>\n Given the quantity of passes Keenum throws, you might expect that he hits a wide variety of targets.\u00a0 You would be correct as Houston as thrown to 19 different receivers, 7 of them catching at least 2 passes per game.\u00a0 This makes Houston an extremely dangerous team to defend in the secondary (you\u2019re surprised, right?).\u00a0 Three receivers in particular stand out: James Cleveland with 101 receptions for 1182 yards and 14 touchdowns, Tyron Carrier with 86 receptions, 998 yards and 7 touchdowns, and Patrick Edwards with 81 catches, 985 yards and 5 touchdowns.<\/p>\n If any team is designed to take what you give them, Houston is that team.\u00a0 Along with a proficient aerial attack, Houston still finds time to run the football often.\u00a0 Bryce Beall and Charles Sims share the load with 138 and 118 carries respectively.\u00a0 Sims is the more efficient of the two, gaining 5.4 yards per carry and 9 touchdowns for his efforts.\u00a0 Beall \u201conly\u201d has 4.8 ypc and 7 touchdowns to his name this season.\u00a0\u00a0 Keenum, too, runs the ball occasionally with 132 yards and 4 touchdowns on 56 carries.\u00a0 If your defense actually manages to seal off the receivers, you can bet Keenum will find a way to gain yardage.<\/p>\n Air Force<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Air Force Fighting Falcons. It's certainly appropriate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Falcons haven\u2019t nearly the season that Houston has.\u00a0 The schedule has been particularly brutal to Air Force as they couldn\u2019t seem to find any rhythm at all flipping back and forth between winning and losing every few weeks.\u00a0 They did, however, have good showings against decent teams when they did lose.\u00a0 The first four losses for the Falcons included a 7 point loss at Minnesota, a 3 point loss at Navy, a 3 point loss to then number 10 TCU (wasn\u2019t quite as close as the score indicated), and a 7 point loss to then number 18 Utah.\u00a0 Air Force held their own quite well against good competition all season.<\/p>\n The one sore mark on their record was a 17 point loss to Brigham Young in their last game.\u00a0 The game wasn\u2019t even as close as the score suggests as BYU started out with a 24-0 lead through the first 25 minutes of the game and then coasted to the victory.\u00a0 This was mostly caused by two reasons, the first was that Air Force could not complete a single drive with points, turning the ball over twice and missing a field goal in four drives.\u00a0 The second was that their defense was simply unable to keep BYU from scoring on 4 straight drives.\u00a0 Often that leads you to a rough loss.<\/p>\n Jared Tew will break you in half with his forehead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Air Force, like all of the service academies these days, is a run first offense.\u00a0 In fact it\u2019s a run second and run third offense too.\u00a0 The runningback leading the attack for the Falcons is Jared Tew with 212 carries 797 yards and 7 touchdowns on the season.\u00a0 Tew is your prototypical Big Ten style running back.\u00a0 Punch it up the gut repeatedly and get the tough yards.\u00a0 The change of pace back in this set is Asher Clark with 736 yards on only 134 carries and 5 touchdowns.\u00a0 Clark is much more of a big play threat than Tew, at least as much as is possible on this Falcon\u2019s offense.\u00a0 Also running the ball is starting quarterback Tim Jefferson.\u00a0 Jefferson has 217 yards on 72 carries with 3 touchdowns running the ball.<\/p>\n His passing stats are equally depressing with only 79 passing attempts and only 54.4% of those completions for 687 yards 5 touchdowns and 2 interceptions.\u00a0 Air Force prefers instead to throw the ball with a number of different passers, and even then follow Woody\u2019s sacred idea that the pass was nothing more than a trick play.\u00a0 Consider that Air Force has thrown only 139 times this season compared to 743 rushing attempts.<\/p>\n Mali: Houston Eric: Houston Jeff: Houston Jim: Houston This is yet another battle of two offensive styles that are diametrically opposed to each other.\u00a0 Air Force is going to run the ball down your throat come hell or high water and Houston is going to throw it no matter how smart running the ball seems to be.\u00a0 Should be a fun game to watch as I suspect Air Force won\u2019t be able to defend Houston, and Houston may not be able to defend Air Force.<\/p>\n This should be fun!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Apparently](\"http:\/\/www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Armed-Forces-Bowl.png\" "\\"Armed")
<\/p>\n![\"Houston](\"http:\/\/www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Houston-Cougars.jpg\" "\\"Houston")
<\/p>\n![\"Case](\"http:\/\/www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Case-Keenum-229x300.jpg\" "\\"Case")
<\/p>\n![\"Air](\"http:\/\/www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Air-Force-Falcons-Logo-300x210.jpg\" "\\"Air"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n![\"Jared](\"http:\/\/www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Jared-Tew1-200x300.jpg\" "\\"Jared")
<\/p>\nWho Are We Picking?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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