Nothing sexy about this Orange Bowl matchup

MIAMI -- To understand where this column is going, you have to understand where it has been. And for the formative years of this column's life, it was in Norman, Okla., where the Oklahoma Sooners spent 364 days of every football season trying to spend day No. 365 in Miami, at the Orange Bowl.

What do Michael and Juanita Jordan have to do with the Orange Bowl? Read on. (AP)

The Orange Bowl was the property of the Big 8, and therefore was a subsidiary of Oklahoma (and Nebraska). If you grew up in Oklahoma, as this column did, you would then understand why tonight's game column -- check back at about midnight -- is thoroughly depressed at the idea of finally attending the Orange Bowl, only to have to chronicle a battle between Wake Forest and Louisville.

Nothing against Wake Forest or Louisville, their coaches, their students or their fans. Quality entities, all of them. But would you please stay the hell out of my Orange Bowl?

The Orange Bowl demonstrates why the Rose Bowl is not this bowl season's big loser, as everyone seems to think. The Rose Bowl, which forever and a day has been tied to the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-10, lost Ohio State to the BCS title game. But the Rose Bowl still lucked its way into Big Ten runner-up Michigan and also got its hands on Pac-10 champion Southern California, which were two of the four best teams in college football.

The Rose Bowl lost Ohio State but kept its identity. The Orange Bowl? And for that matter the Sugar Bowl? They lost almost everything. (The Cotton Bowl? You did lose everything.)

The problem is, lots of you don't even know what I'm talking about. The BCS has been around since 1998, and if the eggheads who tell me about CBS SportsLine.com's "target audience" are correct, lots of you weren't even in high school yet. So you weren't raised on the comforting consistency that used to define college football, where the SEC champion went to the Sugar Bowl, the Big 8 winner went to the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl had dibs on the Southwest Conference and the Rose Bowl scarfed on the Pac-10 and the Big Ten.

So here and now, for anyone who thinks the Fiesta Bowl has always been a major bowl destination, the following detour is for you. To keep your interest going, let's talk for a minute about sex. Not gender, though there was a fascinating story last month out of India about an 800-meter runner there who lost her silver medal in the Asian Games after a post-race test showed she was as much male as female. Or something like that. In any event, she was stripped. Of her medal, I mean.

No, we're not talking sex as in gender. We're talking sex as in sex. Procreation. Fornication. Humping.

Enough with the bowl stuff, right? Now you're hooked. At least, I am. I can't wait to get to the end. I'm hoping there's pictures.

Sex is topical today because three of the biggest sports figures of our time have given us a glimpse into their bedroom. Tiger Woods is becoming a father. Martina Hingis is getting married. Michael Jordan is getting divorced.

We could expand the topic and mention how Philadelphia Phillies slugger Ryan Howard just screwed his agent by firing him on the verge of Howard's first eight-figure contract. But we're letting that bit of news float on past.

For starters, how will Tiger handle becoming a Daddy? Already it is having the wrong kind of impact, that being his decision to skip the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship this week in Maui. A PGA Tour event without Tiger Woods is a PGA Tour event that doesn't matter. Until it happens on CBS' watch, at which point this paragraph never happened.

As for Hingis, she is called tennis' "black widow" by the latest issue of Tennis magazine. Her last boyfriend, Magnus Larson, retired with a hip injury. Julian Alonso also suffered a career-ending injury after being linked to Hingis. Justin Gimelstob avoided that, but was injured nonetheless after his alliance with Hingis. This is terrible news for Hingis' fiancé, Radek Stepanek, but he already knows that. After beginning to date Hingis, he was sidelined last season with an injury.

As for Jordan, his divorce could produce fabulous courtroom testimony if it gets that far. Which means it won't. Mr. Jordan will write Mrs. Jordan an enormous check -- much bigger than the $17 million payout for this year's Orange Bowl.

See how it all comes back to the Orange Bowl? If you grew up in Oklahoma 25-30 years ago, or if you grew up loving college football in that era, you can still see J.C. Watts pitching to Billy Sims against Florida State. You can hear announcer after announcer loving Oklahoma's series of beautifully named halfbacks, from Elvis Peacock to David Overstreet to Buster Rhymes. The Orange Bowl belonged to Oklahoma (or Nebraska).

Tonight it belongs to a couple of basketball schools. I'll be there. And don't you worry -- I'm going to eat lots of free food from the pregame media spread. But I'll chew begrudgingly, still coming to grips with my first Orange Bowl being a game between Wake Forest and Louisville.