At a time when many bowl officials are battling the holiday blues, Jerry Silverstein, president of the GMAC Bowl in Mobile, Ala., is more upbeat than a shopping center elf.

"Looks like another sellout," Silverstein said Tuesday.

And if Miami (Ohio) and Louisville do fill the 46,643-seat Ladd Peebles Stadium in Mobile today, it'll be the third straight sellout for the relatively obscure bowl.

Monday's Tangerine Bowl featuring N.C. State and Kansas is having trouble finding customers. Some of the postseason heavyweights -- the Orange, Cotton, even the Rose -- have struggled in recent years to fill their venues.

The bowl system in many ways is broken. It's the backwash from too many games between too many average teams in tight economic times.

And yet, the GMAC flourishes. It's no accident. Even though it's played in a reasonably remote location, has a pre-Christmas date and can hardly guarantee clear weather and warm temperatures, fans from faraway sites regularly flock to Mobile.

Why? Creative thinking. By contracting with the Mid-American and Conference USA leagues, the GMAC almost always gets schools that are thrilled to play in the postseason. Miami won the MAC but Louisville finished in a tie for third in C-USA.

"It's a great arrangement," Silverstein said. "These fans are glad to be here and our people in Mobile make sure we let them know we're tremendously glad to have them visit us."

In other words, the GMAC Bowl is reeling in big-game tourism by deciding to fish for teams in smaller ponds. Miami (Ohio) is 12-1 and Louisville 9-3. Neither team plays in one of the six Bowl Championship Series conferences, which regularly send teams that finish in the middle of their conference standings to bowls through an extensive assortment of contracts.

Teams in the smaller conferences are assured no such postseason security.

This season, Northern Illinois of the MAC finished 10-2 and defeated Maryland, Iowa State and Alabama but was still snubbed. Toledo, from the same conference, went 8-4 and beat Pittsburgh, but there's nowhere for the Rockets to go. Connecticut, playing as an independent this season, went 9-3 but didn't crack through.

Northern Illinois coach Joe Novak called the system that has the most powerful leagues tying up most of the bowl berths "a crying shame."

It also can be bad business.

One example is Charlotte's Continental Tire Bowl. One of its teams, Virginia, is selling tickets by the thousands. The other, Pittsburgh, is returning them by the thousands. The Panthers went 8-4 but lost two of their final three games -- a late-season slump that cut deeply into fan interest.

It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that either the Tangerine and Continental would be better off with Northern Illinois, which probably would bring at least 15,000 fans to either game.

But neither bowl had that option. The Tangerine has contracts with the ACC and Big 12 and the Continental with the ACC and the Big East.

The result in Orlando next week will be a 6-6 Kansas team against the 7-5 Wolfpack. Both sides combined are likely to wind up selling less than 10,000 tickets. With Christmas falling three days after the game, fans aren't excited enough about their teams to make the long trip.

The solution would be a system with more flexibility. If the non-BCS bowls were allowed to guarantee only one berth, the postseason menu would be infinitely more attractive to fans. Rarely would teams go to the same bowl two straight years and intriguing matchups could be easily arranged.

Suppose the Cotton Bowl this season had Mississippi vs. Miami (Ohio) rather than Ole Miss-Oklahoma State? National interest in such a game could be extraordinary given the pairing of a small-conference school against an SEC team.

Rather than a Maryland vs. West Virginia regular-season rematch in the Gator, why not West Virginia vs. Florida, which is headed to the Outback for the second straight year? Maryland then could go to the Outback for a shot at Iowa.

Even the Orange Bowl needs spicing up this season. No doubt the Miami (Fla.) vs. Florida State drive-in game will be intensely played, but who wouldn't prefer to see Miami against Ohio State or FSU vs. Kansas State?

The next chance to apply some logic to the bowl system will come when the current tie-in contracts end after the 2005 season. For the good of everyone, the practice of allowing mega conferences to operate as self-serving matchmakers needs to stop. It's time for bowl officials to swap some security for some diversity.

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