2008 Orange Bowl
The 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl was a post-season college football bowl game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Kansas Jayhawks on January 3, 2008, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Spread bettors favored Virginia Tech by three points, but in a game dominated by defensive and special teams play, Kansas defeated Virginia Tech 24–21. The game was part of the 2007–2008 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) of the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season and was the concluding game of the season for both teams. This 74th edition of the Orange Bowl was televised in the United States on FOX and was watched by more than eight million viewers.
Bowl Championship Series controversies
Teams from non-AQ conferences have been successful in BCS bowl games, but this has not affected the position of proponents that non-AQ conference teams are not on an equal level with teams from automatic qualifying conferences. Such "BCS Busters" have gone 5–3 in BCS bowl games, and 4–2 in BCS bowls against teams from AQ conferences: Utah won both its BCS bowl appearances in 2004 and 2008, Boise State won both of its appearances in 2006 and 2009, while TCU won a BCS bowl in 2010 after losing one in 2009 (to Boise State). Northern Illinois lost the Orange Bowl to a tough Florida State team 31-10. In the previous year the Clemson Tigers lost by 37 points to the West Virginia Mountaineers, with lower attendance and television ratings. The only team that could reasonably be described as "playing a weak schedule and then being exposed by a BCS team" is the 2007 Hawaii team, which was defeated by Georgia in the 2008 Sugar Bowl.