After 34 games over a three-week span, the 2008 college bowl season came to an end  when Florida beat Oklahoma in the FedEx BCS National Championship game in Miami.

While the record number of bowl games in the 2008 season may have taxed the limits of even the most rabid football fan, I can't wait for the first college bowl game of 2009.

It's not that I'm that crazy about football, although I'll admit to watching my share of bowl games this holiday season. It's because my favorite college football team has already been offered and accepted a bid to play in the first bowl game of 2009.

On Oct. 17, 2009, Mansfield University will meet Army in the fifth annual Allegiance Bowl in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Sponsored by Adirondack Trust, the Allegiance Bowl is the only college bowl game featuring teams from the Collegiate Sprint Football League (CSFL).

Although it has a weight restriction of 172 pounds, sprint football is real college football in every sense. It is varsity collegiate football played with the same amount of players and by the same NCAA rules, with the same intensity of the BCS National Championship game. It's just on a slightly small scale.

The same can be said about the Allegiance Bowl. Instead of a 10-day stay in Florida, it's a two-day affair in one of the prime resort areas of New York state. The 2008 game, which featured Cornell and Navy, had all the trimmings of a New Year's Day bowl, including a Friday night banquet with players and coaches, meetings with local fans, a military flyover, a parachute jump prior to kickoff and a marching band at halftime.

Former President Jimmy Carter, a former sprint football player at Navy, served as the honorary chairman of the 2008 Allegiance Bowl Committee, which raised thousands of dollars to support youth groups in the Saratoga area.

It's an impressive event and as big as it gets in sprint football. The fact Mansfield received a bid is equally as impressive and a testament to the perhaps unexpected early success of the program.

When a group of Mansfield football alums approached the university administration about bringing sprint football to campus after the NCAA Division II program was dropped in 2006, there were a number of people who expressed doubt that sprint football could succeed.

But that core group of football alums, along with key university officials, refused to waiver. Even before head coach Dan Davis was hired in early March, a campaign was launched to educate the general public and recruit players.

More than 70 players originally signed up. When Davis and the Mountaineers took the field for a scrimmage against Princeton, there were 55 players from eight states on the roster. Some came from as far away as Alaska, Nevada, Texas and Michigan, while many others came from area schools, including North Penn, Wellsboro and Canton.

It wasn't just players who came to Mansfield for the unique opportunity offered by sprint football. More than 1,000 fans showed up for the preseason scrimmage against Princeton. The two home games against Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania drew more than 7,000 fans to Karl Van Norman Field.

The fan interest was so great that, although the Mountaineers played a modified schedule including just two home games in their first sprint football season, Mansfield easily led the league in attendance. Other teams in the league were Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Army and Navy.

That excitement was shared by the media as well. The Associated Press ran a story on Mansfield sprint football that appeared in papers nationwide and around the world. The nation's two largest papers - the Wall Street Journal and USA Today - both ran stories including a front page spread in the WSJ.. Stories also ran in national education and business trade publications.

That first game, a home contest against Cornell, was broadcast live locally and throughout Pennsylvania. It was rebroadcast later in the week by Fox Sports, appearing in TV markets all across the country.

After being soundly defeated and shut out by a veteran Cornell team, Mansfield showed marked improvement. The Mountaineers put up two touchdowns in their next game against a Pennsylvania team that was undefeated and unscored on coming into the contest.

In their next outing, a road game at Princeton, Mansfield recorded the program's first victory with a resounding 28-3 win over the Tigers.

But it was the next week at Cornell in the final game of the season that the Mountaineers made their loudest statement. Against the same Cornell team that held them to just 14 yards of total offense in their first meeting, Mansfield stunned the Big Red by holding a 28-24 lead with seven minutes to play. Although Cornell rallied and won the game, the Mountaineers outgained the Big Red 383-343 in total yardage..

The Cornell coaching staff was stunned by Mansfield's improvement and that astonishment resounded around the league. At the CSFL meeting after the season, every head coach said that Mansfield, a team with 45 freshmen, would be the team to beat in a year or two.

Mansfield was so improved that the league voted to accelerate its acceptance as a full member starting in 2009 after originally believing it would take until 2010 for the Mountaineers to become competitive.

All that success didn't go unnoticed in the high school football world. Davis and his staff sent out more than 3,000 mailings to high school coaches and players across the country informing them about the unique opportunity to play sprint football at Mansfield.

That mailing, along with countless e-mails and media accounts, has produced close to 400 inquires from high school players and coaches around the country. Although the NCAA's National Signing Day is still a month away, Davis has already received verbal commitments from two dozen high school seniors.

While Davis is pleased to have such interest nationally, he firmly believes the foundation for a future CSFL championship team lies right here in the Twin Tiers. A native of football-mad Michigan and a 20-year collegiate coaching veteran, Davis has been impressed with the caliber of local players.

"They're tough little buggers," Davis said. "They know how to play football the old-fashioned way, hard-hitting and fundamentally sound, who just want an opportunity to play college football.

"They were a strong core of our program this year and I hope and expect that to continue for many years."

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for the 2009 bowl season to begin.