FanHouse Champs Sports Bowl

Turkey Legs to Go is FanHouse's complete travel guide for all of the 2008-2009 college bowl games. Here, we cover the Champs Sports Bowl (Orlando, Florida), which pits Florida State against Wisconsin.

Overview/Matchup: Nothing says "December bowl game" quite like two proud programs on the decline temporary skids meeting up to try and muster some offense for those of us watching in Orlando the Friday after Christmas. Florida State, mind you, "won" the ACC Atlantic Division (BC's loss technically slid them behind the 'Noles) ... but with the way that that's like trying to find a silver lining in the Detroit buyouts. Wisconsin brings some defense and P.J. Hill, who will need to run the ball well in order for this to be exciting for anyone.

Hotels: Assuming most football fanatics would rather stay away from the sprawling Disney and Universal theme-parks, we've selected restaurants and hotels with good proximity to the stadium. However, if you decide to double up on your bowl-game weekend and pay a visit to the parks, there are myriad hotels and restaurants in the Lake Buena Vista area. That being said, the Grand Bohemian Orlando is the best bet for luxury accommodation downtown. If you can't afford downtown and you don't want Disney, the next best thing is close to the airport... with that in mind we recommend the Hyatt Regency Orlando Intl Airports. For the best proximity to the stadium (and the cheapest rates) stay at the Vacation Lodge downtown.

Restaurants: Dining in the downtown area is, once again, limited compared to University Blvd, but there are some enticing options just the same. K Restaurant & Wine Bar is a local favorite offering a different menu every night. Reservations are recommended. Manuel's on the 28th is located on the 28th floor of the Bank of America building for stunning city views and a romantic atmosphere. Try the miso-marinated sea bass or one of the nightly specials. Little Saigon is cheap, offers generous helpings and specializes in traditional Vietnamese soups.

Nightlife: As for nightlife, if you want a refined evening consider returning to the K Restaurant & Wine Bar or paying a visit to Eola Wine Company. The latter has a wide selection of merlots and chiantis (among others) and specializes in California's Napa region. For casual atmosphere, try Fiddler's Green, a lively Irish pub a few minutes north of downtown. The pub frequently has live music.

All travel related information brought to you by Professional Travel Guide.

Ready for bowl season? Join FanHouse as we preview each of the 34 bowls with a lot of analysis, a little irreverence, and, we promise, at least one joke about Karl Malden's nose. Your parents, or Joe Paterno, will explain it to you.

Below are the Week 1 bowl games. Click here for Week 2 and the non-BCS bowls of Week 3. Or click here for BCS bowls analysis.

As the radio and TV keep telling us, it's the most wonderful time of the year. For college football fans, this is most certainly true. We're only 10 days away from the start of the bowl season, and already, the BCS national championship has been analyzed to death. (Hey, did you realize Oklahoma scores a lot of points? Wow, Florida has a good quarterback. I think his name is Tom Turbo or something.)

Some games get substantially less attention than the big time, big money blockbusters, however, and there's a good reason for that. They're only meaningful to the teams involved and their fans. But that doesn't mean that we fans should pay them no attention. It just means we don't need to pay them much attention.

So we at FanHouse have decided to give you a brief summary of these lesser games. I know that calling the Motor City Bowl "lesser" might be controversial, at least to people from Detroit, or people from the planet Gazorpnitz. For the rest of us, we'll keep it short. We start with the games played before Dec. 30, and if you don't see a game previewed here, it'll get more attention from one of us later. Now, onward!

Bowl bids are announced and Maryland will be facing Purdue at the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando on December 29th at 8PM. Although I'm glad that the Terps are going to a bowl, after the loss in the last two games, I started losing interest in what bowl we could go to. The prospect of a BCS bowl or the Gator bowl is exciting, but the Terps are now in a bowl that is muddled in with every other mediocre bowl, all sponsored by every company in existence.

This will be a nice encore after a pretty good season. Much like the Terps, the Boilermakers didn't lose many games that they shouldn't. All but one loss to Penn State were losses to ranked teams. It should make for a good game against two teams that were good, but not great.

I'll have to do a little research on Purdue since I don't know much about the Big 10 team. I'll do that and report back.

Terps fans were all hoping for a shot at the ACC title and a BCS Bowl bid, but those plans fell through. After that, a lesser bowl is not that exciting. However, Maryland hasn't been to a bowl game in a couple years so just getting to a bowl is a step up. It's not what we were hoping for in the height of the season, but it's an extra game in December. And that's something we haven't had in Maryland in awhile.