The disadvantages of playing in the Military Bowl are obvious.

Considered a second tier bowl, by all standards.

Daytime, weekday game: Monday, December 28 at 2:30pm.

Being passed over by the ACC tier one bowl partners for teams with lesser records — two of whom Pitt beat head-to-head.

Opponent that is not from one of the other four major conferences.

An opponent that is hardly a rare occurence for Pitt in Navy.

Playing virtual road game in the bowl by facing Navy in Annapolis.

Now, the upsides:

It’s not Birmingham.

Not a hard roadtrip. Four hour drive from Pittsburgh, plus the Pitt Athletic Department is doing everything it can to make this easy with charter buses that are not exactly exorbitant.

It’s not going to El Paso for the Sun Bowl.

Playing a top-25 opponent instead of, say, Indiana. So, it is actually a good match-up.

Pitt was 5-1 on the road this year.

It’s not Shreveport.

Most of the outrage is the disrespect factor of the higher ranked bowls passing over Pitt for teams that did not have as good a record and/or played a bad non-con to pad their numbers (NC State).

I get that. If the bowls were a meritocracy. They aren’t. They are about TV and tickets. The one ESPN owns or are so out there (Sun Bowl) are about the TV eyeballs. The others are focused on ticket sales.

David Teel has a great piece on the bowl selections for the ACC (albeit with the VT angle).

The league’s bowls beyond the six controlled by the College Football Playoff are three-pronged. The Russell Athletic has the first choice of ACC teams after the CFP, followed by four Tier One games (Belk, Pinstripe, Sun and either Music City or TaxSlayer) and three Tier Two (Independence, Military and Quick Lane).

This is the second season under this arrangement, and with Clemson (13-0) making a CFP semifinal and Florida State (10-2) qualifying for the Peach Bowl, the Russell Athletic took North Carolina (11-2). That left Pittsburgh (8-4), Miami (8-4), Duke (7-5), North Carolina State (7-5), Louisville (7-5) and Tech.

The Pinstripe in New York wanted Duke and its Wall Street alums. The Music City in Nashville wanted Louisville. The Sun in El Paso, Texas was good with Miami. Done, done and done.

The Belk wanted the Hokies, but the ACC does not allow a Tier One bowl to select a 6-6 team instead of an 8-4 squad, and with Pitt still on the board, Virginia Tech was unavailable. So the Belk chose N.C. State.

Again. Local ticket sales. Between alum in Charlotte, and the reasonable drive within the state. Kind of easy call.

If you’re reading this that none of the Tier One bowls wanted Pitt, you’re correct. The Panthers had a terrific year under new coach Pat Narduzzi but don’t travel particularly well — their final two home games, against Louisville and Miami, drew announced crowds of 42,119 and 40,126 to 68,400-seat Heinz Field.

With the Tier One bowls slotted, Tech and Pitt were left for the Military and Independence. The Hokies defeated Cincinnati in last year’s Military, and the ACC and its bowl partners frown upon sequels.

But Military Bowl officials welcomed the idea of matching Beamer against homestanding Navy — the Hokies defeated the Midshipmen in 1987 for the first of Beamer’s 237 victories at his alma mater. The ACC, almost certainly on behalf of Beamer and Tech, declined.

Navy (9-2 entering Saturday’s game against Army) dusted Tulsa 44-21 two weeks ago and would have been a more formidable opponent than the Golden Hurricane. So Shreveport plays to Beamer’s pragmatic and sentimental sides.

Yes, Pitt could have ended up falling even further. Such that there was more than just a touch of sarcasm in Narduzzi’s comment.

“It’s a rocky road when you talk bowls and all the politics involved,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said. “I’m just glad they didn’t leave us out. I’d have been disappointed if we didn’t get a bowl selection.”

There wasn’t a lot of subtlety to AD Scott Barnes thoughts on the process.

 Still, the Pinstripe Bowl opted for Duke (7-5) over Pitt.

“We were very pleased with our communications there,” Barnes said. “Why they chose Duke? You’re going to need to ask them.”

Barnes, in his first year at Pitt, added that the ACC’s bowl selection process was “less prescribed and more subjective” than previous conferences he had worked in. He admitted that there was likely a stigma attached to Pitt that its fans don’t travel well. To that end, Barnes has made a concerted effort to try to get fans to make the four-hour drive to Annapolis for this game.

There’s a chicken-egg argument to make with fanbase travel. Pitt has a reputation for not being a particularly good traveling fanbase. Especially for Bowls. Still, the last several bowls haven’t been hotspots. Detroit, Birmingham x 3, El Paso. Even the Belk Bowl in 2009 came on the heels of bitter disappointment with Pitt’s finish. Still, the reputation was there even before that point.

The best way to look at this game is as an opportunity. Navy is a quality opponent. The game is in reasonable distance of Pittsburgh and plenty of alum on the East Coast. The ticket allocation for Pitt is under 7,500.