FanHouse TexasBowl

Turkey Legs to Go is FanHouse's complete travel guide for all of the 2008-2009 college bowl games. Here, we cover the Texas Bowl (Houston, Texas), which pits Rice against Western Michigan.

Overview / Matchup: A 40 point thumping at the hands of Tulsa nearly derailed Rice's season, but a six straight wins over C-USA foes has them headed to a post-Christmas bowl, no small feat for such a small school. Meanwhile, Western Michigan, going to a bowl game for back-to-back seasons for the first time in school history, also looks to make a milestone by winning their first ever bowl game. I wish we were joking about that.

Hotels: The St. Regis is arguably the finest hotel in Houston. The hotel staff is meticulous and the atmosphere manages to be sophisticated and elegant without seeming stuffy. The property is about fifteen minutes from the stadium. It might seem far, but in America's third largest city by area, the distance is actually quite reasonable. Situated within the Astro Village complex, near the Astrodome and Galleria shopping complex, the Houston Grand Plaza Hotel offers the best value for your bowl-game weekend. Although the hotel is on the low end of a four-star rating, the Grand Plaza has hearty buffets and great proximity to the stadium. The Reliant Park Inn & Suites is definitely the bargain of the three. The property has rooms for less than US$100 per night and is located right next to the stadium.

Every bowl game is important to the teams involved but not all of them are important to the rest of us. Still, they all deserve at least some of our attention, so FanHouse is previewing all the minor bowls in three sentences or less. Part 1, which covered all the games played before Dec. 30, may be found here. In this installment, we look at the rest of this year's less weighty games. If a game isn't covered in Part 1 or Part 2, we'll give it more attention soon.

Your New Year's Eve Eve will start off with the Humanitarian Bowl (Maryland vs. Nevada), and the over/under is 43. That's not for points; that's for the number of Maryland fans who will actually fly across the country to watch a 7-5 team play another 7-5 team in a stadium that takes its color cues from the Brady Bunch's rec room.

Later that same day we get the Texas Bowl (Western Michigan vs. Rice). Both these teams feature wide-open offenses and purely theoretical defenses, so expect a lot of points. Actually, don't expect anything, because it's on the NFL Network and you probably won't be able to see it.