Obie gets to take off the suit (probably), but staging December and January games can be a full-time gig. (AP)

We joked Monday about how we would’ve loved to work for the Fiesta Bowl during the John Junker heyday, because who doesn’t enjoy attending $30,000 birthday parties? But you, gentle readers, may be as surprised to learn that bowl employees work more than four days a year as our own mother was to learn that we work more than four months. While recuperating from the crush of bowl season, Campus Union spoke with bowl worker bees and executive types busy putting bows on their 2011 games while laying the groundwork for the 2012 postseason. Here’s what we learned.

Months of moving parts

Every postseason college football contests maintains a year-round calendar of sorts, though we were surprised on both ends of the spectrum by just how many and how few year-round employees are retained by certain games. (For comparison’s sake: The Outback Bowl employs five year-round staffers; the Music City Bowl has nine, most of whom double up with duties to the Nashville Sports Council; and the Orange Bowl has 30, with plans to bring on an additional nine full-time positions this year to accommodate preparations for hosting the BCS title game.) The timeline varies wildly based on available personnel, resources, the organization’s presence in the community and how the game approaches its own team selection process. The first scout I personally laid eyes on last season was a very nice lady representing the Champs Sports Bowl in Morgantown in Week 3 during LSU-West Virginia. Both squads, of course, would go on to win their conferences and play in BCS bowls, but that early in the season, bowl scouts share the same disadvantage as the rest of us: All they have to go on is preseason rankings and their own prognostications.

Still, for a game like the Chick-fil-A Bowl, which draws from two of the more voluminous conferences, scouting all potentially eligible teams in person in a single season is a daunting task. Volunteer CFA scouts go out in Week 1 to begin assessing various SEC and ACC squads, though the bowl’s selection committee does not convene until November.

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Le'Veon Bell's two short-yardage touchdowns helped Michigan State force overtime. (US PRESSWIRE)

Snaps from the Jan. 2 slate’s non-BCS bowls, of which the Big Ten managed to win just one of four…

• No. 12 Michigan State 33, No. 18 Georgia 30 (3OT): Hail, Sparty the redeemer! At the end of a very long afternoon for the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Big Ten, following three dissimilar but equally dispiriting losses by conference squads (more on those down below), MSU pulled one out for the honor of Jim Delany and middle America.

The game began in most ignominious fashion, with the Spartans’ first drive culminating in a safety by all-everything Dawg Brandon Boykin, and two spectacular field-enveloping plays (an 80-yard touchdown pass from Aaron Murray to Tavarres King and a 92-yard punt return by Boykin) giving Georgia a 16-0 halftime lead. Le’Veon Bell made up most of that ground for the Spartans in the second half with two short-yardage touchdown runs, and by the end of his second scoring effort, the game was tied 27-27 with 14 seconds to play in regulation.

Which is about where the trouble started, although Dawgs fans fed up with conservative playcalling on offense might have a good argument that Georgia’s last drive of the fourth quarter sealed its fate. Here, as predicted in this week’s Bowl Breakdown, special teams came into the spotlight in a big, bad way. UGA kicker Blair Walsh, a Groza finalist in 2010 but not himself in 2011, missed a 42-yard field goal attempt (on third down, no less) in the first overtime period, after Bacarri Rambo’s interception of Kirk Cousins snatched away State’s chance to strike first. Walsh connected on a 47-yarder in the second period, as did MSU’s Dan Conroy. Walsh’s final attempt, to match Conroy’s third-period three-pointer, was blocked.

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Welcome to the Capital One Bowl, which used to be the Tangerine Bowl and is played in the Citrus Bowl.

The 2012 Capital One Bowl is just hours away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an Xs and Os breakdown, check out Bill Trocchi’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? Welcome to Orlando and the 66th Capital One Bowl, which has been the Tangerine Bowl way more times than the Champs Sports Bowl has.

• Where will this game be played? The Citrus Bowl, which was also the name of this game for 10 years after it got through being the Tangerine Bowl. Oh, and the stadium also used to be called the Tangerine Bowl. As you were.

• When is it on television? Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET, Monday, January 2. The game will be televised on ESPN.

• Whom does it feature? Half of college football’s major conferences and more than a few minor ones (OVC, holla!) have had tie-ins to this game at one point or another; current contracts pit the SEC against the Big Ten.

• What about this year? This is the day we all look forward to each bowl season, when matchup quality really starts to ramp up (before plummeting again, briefly, for the purposes of the inexplicable BBVA Compass Bowl). Today, 9-3 Nebraska and 10-2 South Carolina will face off.

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