It's not the Rose Bowl, but it's worth the trip.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

IT'S TOO EASY to question why the Seattle Bowl even exists, and easier still to make sport of the fact that the Ducks have officially accepted an invitation to play there.

But it does, and they have, and so be it.

Coaches and administrators talk about bowl games being a "reward," and perhaps it's fitting that a team that went 7-5, lost five of its last six games and essentially got itself bowl-eligible by defeating (take your pick) Idaho or Portland State is being rewarded with a bowl game in a city where December brings 30-something temperatures and rain that goes sideways.

It's a Northwest bowl for Oregon in a season in which the Ducks were swept by their Northwest rivals. The Ducks will sell it as a chance to make amends, to leave a better last impression in their own back yard.

A chief topic of debate since the Ducks ended the season with three straight losses was whether they "deserve" to be in a bowl, a landmark debate for Oregon football fans who went from not being in a bowl game from 1964 through 1988 to considering themselves quite the connoisseurs of bowl games.

However, the issue isn't whether the Ducks deserve to still be playing, any more than whether the Seattle Bowl deserves to exist for its second (and potentially last) incarnation.

The issue is should the Ducks play, having received the invitation, and of course they should and they must, and they were right to pursue the best bowl option they could get. Or only bowl option.

Whether you decide to spend the money to follow them is, of course, an entirely different matter. After an eight-game home season, some fans have spent all they want on Oregon football, especially when measured by the win.

On the other hand, the Seattle Bowl offers a chance for fans who couldn't get into Autzen Stadium this season to see the lads play in person, and in a bowl game at that. There have been years when the demand for tickets exceeded the supply, and that doesn't figure to be the case this year. There have been years in which bowl games meant expensive plane tickets, many nights in expensive hotel rooms and spending Christmas or New Year's Eve on the road.

That's not the case this year, either. Sure, this isn't the game in Pasadena, or San Diego. But it's not Shreveport either, or San Jose.

It's a five-hour car trip and a night in a hotel. It's close. It's easy. It's a low-budget bowl that you can get to on a low budget, which is what you'd figure it would be worth to see the Pac-10's eighth-place team play one more time.

For the Oregon football team, the upside really is greater than the downside.

First of all, there are those extra 15 practices, and the chance for the young players to take a step toward next season. There's the bowl streak that stays alive at six straight. There's even the chance for the Oregon players to walk out of the Huskies' indoor practice facility, where they'll practice some, and yawn that "It's nice, I guess, but not quite what we've got back in Eugene."

In Wake Forest, the Ducks get a perfect foil - a team that doesn't pass much at all, which ought to be good news for Oregon's beleaguered pass defense. Then again, the Beavers weren't passing much - at least, not completing them - for quite a stretch until the Civil War.

And you figure the Demon Deacons could be the darlings of the crowd in Seattle, where the local ticket buyers have a purple-and-yellow loathing for the Ducks, and where the Oregon fans themselves would best be kept away from sharp objects if things start going south for their team once again.

Elsewhere, the bowl news over the weekend was fascinating:

Oregon State and its new director of athletics, Bob De Carolis, ultimately got out-politicked by Arizona State for the berth in the Holiday Bowl, but it wasn't for lack of effort. The Beavers lost a marquee bowl game and a much bigger payday - they could lose money going to Phoenix - and Pitt will be a load in the Insight Bowl.

By the same token, ASU could get rolled by Kansas State, and for OSU a ninth win would be huge, regardless of the dateline.

Does Rick Neuheisel live right or what? The Huskies, in danger of going nowhere, sweep the Northwest and get a nice, safe berth in the Sun Bowl, against a Big Ten team, Purdue, that they ought to beat solidly. And Bob Toledo gets fired at UCLA, so the Washington coach gets to enjoy the limelight of speculation over whether he'd return to coach his alma mater for as long as he chooses to indulge it.

The Orange Bowl stole the Rose Bowl. Well, sort of. It manipulated the Bowl Championship Series rules to produce a matchup of Southern California and Iowa, snatching the Hawkeyes and their legions of fans from the clutches of the Granddaddy of Them All, which gets gritty Washington State against the Big 12's Oklahoma.

So much for honor among. ...

Both the Rose and the Orange should be great bowl games, but the alignments feel strange. No stranger, though, than the Ducks going to Seattle to play a team that isn't Washington in a strange bowl game to end a strange season.

See you there.