Foortbrawwgh 2010

I have resolved to watch at least a quarter of every bowl game this year. I highly doubt that I will be able to meet that resolution, given that I intend to go visit people at some point in the next two weeks rather than spending all of my time on the couch, but I will do my best.

This post will be updated with impressions of each game.

• New Mexico Bowl: Mormons thoroughly trounced Magnets on a field that might have been maintained well enough to be used by a small high school team. The first half closed with a scene that could have been exciting as the Magnets drove down to the Mormons' 3-yard line with 4 seconds remaining in the half. Unfortunately, the Magnets' quarterback threw the ball wide, something that happened with regularity in the others parts of the game that I saw. The Mormons were clearly the superior football team. Unrelated: one of the bands played Hockey Cheer.
• Humanitarian Bowl: I caught the end of this. By that time, it looked like Northern Illinois had assumed that the game was over and Fresno State appeared to be powerless to challenge the assumption. Games like this make the Big Ten look bad, but mostly Ron Zook.
• New Orleans Bowl: I dozed off watching this. When I woke up, ESPN was showing the replay of a Troy play where multiple laterals behind the line of scrimmage were followed by an incomplete pass. The rest of the game was even more of a waste. Troy's offense was clearly better than Ohio's defense: the Trojans scored on every possession until they started playing their backups late in the third quarter. Troy's defense was clearly better than Ohio's offense, too. The only thing you can do with a game like that is to muse about the mathematical possibility that Ohio's offense could still be better than Troy's offense, but when you have to resort to things like that for entertainment, you're not watching a very good football game. When a Troy receiver fumbled while being tackled and Ohio recovered in the fourth quarter, the crowd only seemed to pretend to care. The Superdome is a terrific venue, though.
• Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg: The name of this game concerns me because it makes it sound like there could someday be other Beef 'O' Brady's Bowls in other locations. I, for one, do not welcome our new over-apostrophed overlords. I'm also somewhat glad that Beef 'O' Brady's does not have any locations in convenient driving distance, because I would otherwise feel obligated to try one out. Anyway, football. The turf in the stadium reflected the light in a way that made it look almost exactly like natural grass with snow ground into it, which seemed out of place in St. Petersburg. For much of the first quarter, it looked like Louisville was simply going to fall down. Things hit their lowest point when Louisville nearly fumbled their way from a 14-0 deficit to a 16-0 deficit. After that, though, they remembered that the Big East is supposed to be better than Conference USA and managed to hold even, making up their early deficit by being much better at special teams.
• Maaco Bowl Las Vegas: I turned this on at the beginning of the second quarter and saw what appeared to be a game between two middle-of-the-road Big Ten teams. However, Boise State eventually remembered that they have more talent on offense than a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team and the game opened up a bit. Doug Martin is fast. Meanwhile, I've been having trouble remembering that the Humanitarian Bowl is not like the Hawai'i Bowl and doesn't go out of its way to include Boise State.
• Poinsettia Bowl: Unremarkable and less interesting than the Maaco Bowl. Not bad football, but I don't remember much other than that the ESPN announcers seemed more interested in the fact that the field had been flooded the day before the game than in the game itself.
• Hawai'i Bowl: Hawai'i's quarterback threw five interceptions in the first half. More of Hawai'i's drives in that half ended due to interceptions than to punts. In the second half, Hawai'i's offense managed to put together a few successful drives, but their defense released all the slack that their offense had picked up. It seemed like both teams were intent on building a game solely out of big gains and turnovers, and it was a little too much for my Big Ten stomach. Also, I didn't recognize either of the announcers that ESPN sent out to this game, and as you may have noticed, I watch a lot of football. The really noteworthy thing about this game, though, is that Hawai'i proved incapable of selling tickets to a bowl game in their home stadium. I estimate that at most one quarter of the seats were filled at the beginning of the game. Seeing mostly empty seats close to the field around the 50-yard line in a bowl game is... disturbing.
• Pizza Bowl: I saw a Little Caesars commercial during the game that called this the, "Pizza Bowl." I refuse to believe ESPN's claim that it should be called the, "Little Caesars Bowl," instead. Ford Field was even emptier for this game than Aloha Stadium was two days before, but the facilities in Ford Field allowed the cameras to be positioned in such a way that it wasn't as noticeable. The quality of play was definitely weaker than in the Maaco and Poinsettia Bowls, but the game made up for it by being occasionally exciting. FIU's fourth-down pass near the end of the game in particular was possibly the least believable play that I've seen all year.
• Independence Bowl: I completely missed this game. I was driving down I-94 the entire time and I was unable to find a terrestrial radio broadcast. I had to go to work today and was not in a position to stay up until 3:30 watching ESPN2's rebroadcast. I would've really liked to have a watched a triple option slugfest, too. Too bad.
• Champs Sports Bowl: Now featuring the Not Big Ten! It looked like both teams' defenses were, for the most part, slightly too fast for the other teams' offenses. However, NC State was able to hold their team together at the end of the game, perhaps with Rotosound strings, while West Virginia basically fell apart. Not a bad game to watch, or at least the parts I saw of it.
• Insight Bowl: It's always interesting to see Matt Millen in the booth because he has such an unusually large head. I don't think I like hearing him in the booth, though. Anyway, I am very grateful that Iowa did not decide to further spite Michigan State by blowing a fourth-quarter lead. The STANZIBALL did make a special guest appearance, but then Micah Hyde decided that he didn't want to go 7-6. I was rather impressed with Gabbert's performance in the game, interception aside. I was less impressed with the announcers' decision to more or less crap on Adrian Clayborn.
• Military Bowl: I caught the first 3/8ths of the late replay of this on ESPN2, due to the game having been scheduled while I was at my job-thing. ESPN2 cut out most of the insignificant plays, so I was left with a series of derps from both teams. A penalty on the opening kickoff followed by an interception? Followed by an excessive celebration penalty? And then a failed attempt to run the ball from the shotgun on 4th & 1? Oh, dear. I gave up when ECU finally did something that I didn't dislike by kicking a respectable field goal. Judging from the final score (51-20 Maryland), I'm guessing the second half was another series of derps, except on the defensive side of the ball.
• Texas Bowl: Illinois finally returned to the form that allowed them to lose respectably to Ohio State and Michigan State midway through the season. Baylor played like a top-flight Conference USA team. I don't intend the latter statement as a slight, but it simply wasn't good enough. Ron Zook survives to return next season.
• Alamo Bowl: I had a really hard time paying attention to this game due to a combination of lack of interest, lack of sleep, and the fact that I'd just watched another game, so I have little to say about what happened. Arizona had no chance. The Nebraska-Washington pairing wasn't the only ace that the Big 12 drew in their bowl selections. The Fiesta Bowl has Oklahoma going up against UConn, who may not even be the best team in the Big East (and look what NC State did to West Virginia). This game pitted a top-20 Big 12 school against a team from another conference that ended the season on a major skid and the results weren't surprising. The Insight Bowl did the same thing, though that game had a different result due to Iowa being much better than their record suggested. The Texas Bowl looked like mediocrity vs. mediocrity on paper. The only matchup that really looks unfavorable is Texas A&M against LSU. Maybe the Big 12 is just really stacked and/or overrated this year. Hmm.
• Armed Forces Bowl: This game happened while I was at work and it is not being rebroadcast, as far as I can tell. That's too bad.
• Pinstripe Bowl: Another work game and I was too tired to follow the replay, so I'm only going to touch on what I saw as the two most noteworthy occurrences. The biggest thing was obviously the salute penalty. It was stupid and I think that the officials only called it in an attempt to focus attention upon themselves. I'm not even sure that the salute violated the letter of the rule: it was neither delayed nor prolonged and it certainly wasn't any more excessive or choreographed than kneeling and praying in the endzone — and I have yet to see anyone penalized for doing that. The second thing, which most people don't seemed to have noticed, is that the salute may not have mattered had the ball been held on Syracuse's fourth extra point attempt with the laces out. Honorable mention: the beautiful option pitch that Kansas State ran at the goalline in the fourth quarter; flea-flickers that actually worked.
• Music City Bowl: Like with the Alamo Bowl yesterday, I did a very poor job watching the majority of this game. It looked like it was just two evenly-matched, not outstanding teams playing in a mid-tier bowl. Average stuff. However, when Tennessee missed that extra point in the fourth quarter, I decided to start paying attention, and wow, did I pick the right time to do so. If the Military Bowl was a frustrating series of derps, the end of regulation in this game was an exciting parade of EPIC DERPs. Two consecutive loss-of-down penalties on what looked like North Carolina's final, must-score drive? A pass bouncing off a North Carolina receiver's chest on the last play of that drive? Tennessee giving North Carolina the ball back and putting Bonk in at safety to move them all the way down into field goal range? North Carolina somehow outdoing the end of the Tennessee-LSU game by spiking the ball with one second on the clock and 14 or so players on the field? Tennessee making things even worse for themselves by picking up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and letting North Carolina start overtime on the 12.5-yard line? Incredible. After all that, it would've been a shame if North Carolina hadn't won the game.
• Holiday Bowl: Based on what I knew of these two teams' previous meeting, I was expecting to write, "SLAUGHTER BOWL," as my comment for this game and be done with it. However, this game did not proceed in the manner that I had anticipated. Nebraska's offense looked really bad. On running plays, they seemed to have difficulty not running into a pile of defenders at the line of scrimmage. On passing plays, Martinez failed to make an impact and Green was awful — and when he wasn't awful, his receivers dropped the ball. Washington, meanwhile, did pretty well. ESPN interviewed Jake Locker a day or two ago and basically said, "Coming back for your senior year ruined your draft prospects. How does that make you feel?" I guess he wanted to respond. For example, he managed to throw a first-down pass while being sacked and still look poised. Most quarterbacks can't do that. I was kind of pulling for Nebraska here because they're joining the Big Ten next year, but I can't deny that Washington looked like the better team. Other things of note: ESPN impressed me by cutting away to the last couple minutes of UConn's loss; holding in the endzone is one of my favorite penalties and I am always at least a little delighted to see it called; my evaluation of the Big 12's bowl matchups after the Alamo Bowl appears to have been horribly wrong.
• Meineke Car Care Bowl: My first thought upon watching this game was, "Ah, we're going back to another battle of mid-majors to start the slate of New-Year's-ish bowls." Then I remembered that Clemson is in the ACC and USF is in the Big East. Sorry, guys. Anyway, at the beginning of the game, Clemson's defense was containing USF effectively and their offense was, well, kicking a field goal, but still looking stronger than USF's. One of the announcers seized on this and started talking about how it looked like Clemson was the team that really wanted to be there. He compared Clemson to Washington in the Holiday Bowl last night. At the time it seemed like a fair thing to say, so I took a shower and went to Taco Bell. I didn't really start paying attention again until the fourth quarter, at which point, it seemed like the game had been completely reversed. USF was leading and they opened the quarter by intercepting a pass, running it most of the way back, and then putting the ball in the end zone on a fairly relaxed-looking option play. The announcers sounded slightly guilty. I then made a grave error by giving up on Clemson and going over to the Sun Bowl with four minutes left. USF did win, but I would have liked to have seen Clemson run down the field twice. The Big East's historic success in bowl games against non-Big-Ten/Big-12/SEC teams continues. Also, USF's band played Hockey Cheer. You cannot escape the Spartan Marching Band's sphere of influence.
• Sun Bowl: At last, the time has come when one can flip between bowl games at commercial breaks. Unfortunately, the CBS feed that I get is about 10 decibels louder than the ESPN feed, so I elected not to take advantage of that opportunity (I'm saving that for tomorrow's slate of three 7-5 Big Ten teams sucking viewers away from what would otherwise be a highlight Michigan State-Alabama game). When I did finally switch from the Car Care Bowl to this, the Catholics had a 14-0 lead and were in the process of turning in a 44-yd gain on an option pitch for another touchdown. In the parts of the game that I saw following that, the Convicts struggled to accomplish anything at all. Their lone success was keeping Notre Dame out of the end zone at the end of the first half and then kicking a long-ish field goal. I wouldn't even say that Notre Dame played particularly well. Miami (not the good Miami) just seemed really ineffective. There was one play in the third quarter where Miami's quarterback ran out of the pocket and then stopped and stood to watch a Notre Dame defender jog toward him before finally stepping out of bounds at the line of scrimmage. That performance caused me to give up in the fourth quarter. That proved to have been another mistake, but Miami's comeback was no more successful than Clemson's. Meanwhile, one of the CBS announcers claimed to be buddies with Tom Monaghan. It might actually be a different Tom, but either way, I bet he eats a lot of Domino's.
• Liberty Bowl: During the first quarter of this game, I was watching the Sun Bowl. During the second quarter, I was watching Michigan State unveil a new, existential vision of basketball where the ball is frequently brought near the hoop but never quite goes in. During the third quarter, I simply didn't feel like watching. When I reluctantly forced myself to pay attention in the fourth quarter, the score was 6-3. The announcers did nothing to convince me that any of the things that I had missed were more interesting than Georgia's final drive. Georgia's offensive line didn't appear to be playing very well.
• Chick-Fil-A Bowl: I missed almost all of this game because I was busy making dinner. Dinner is, in my mind, always a top priority. The only play that I saw in the first half featured Florida State's quarterback throwing a short pass near the feet of a receiver who was wide open near the end zone... on fourth down. Somehow, though, when I tuned in for the last few minutes, Florida State was winning decisively. South Carolina had the ball, but they were basically conceding defeat. A stupid holding penalty and a bizarre decision from Steve Spurrier to wait for 10-20 seconds to run off the clock before calling timeout indicated to me that the team wasn't really in it. The conclusion: Jimbo Fisher receiving a Gator- Noleade bath and giving a surprisingly mild reaction. One effect of this game was that I became convinced that I was really in the thick of the Good Football™ for bowl season. I was nervous about what the aforementioned slate of 7-5 Big Ten teams could do to that, however.
• TicketCity Bowl: I watched most of what happened in this game before the Capital One Bowl and it looked like Northwestern's play was consistent with that of their other games after the loss of Dan Persa. Their offense was mostly ineffective and that somehow ruined their defense. Somehow, though, when I flipped back to this game near the end, NU was within a touchdown. You can always count on Northwestern to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, they still lost. Also, they apparently aren't interesting enough for their fanbase. When Texas Tech kicked their field goal, ESPN's camera crew gave the usual shot where the camera pulls up to show the ball going through the uprights. There were maybe 15 people in the stands behind the posts. Later shots showed that the sidelines had a few people, so it's possible that this game drew more people than the Hawai'i and Pizza Bowls, but even so, it felt like New Year's Day opened with a mid-major battle. Perhaps this game will be moved to an earlier date in the future.
• Outback Bowl: Battle of the disappointing seasons! This game had audible crowd noise, though, which was a pleasant change from the preceding early-morning bowl games, especially the TicketCity Bowl. I watched a little of this near the beginning and it appeared that Matt McGloin was in Good Quarterback mode, but I checked back a couple minutes later and he had clearly reverted to Bad Quarterback mode by that point. Penn State managed to keep the game close into the fourth quarter and even put up a big defensive stop to hold Florida to a field goal. When your quarterback is Bad, though, it's hard to win. Five interceptions.
• Capital One Bowl: SLAUGHTER BOWL.
• Gator Bowl: This may be hard to believe given the final score, but it looked like Michigan was going to stomp Mississippi State when I first tuned into this. Denard Robinson put up a big running play and just a few plays later, Mississippi State (I refuse to write, "MSU") decided that not putting any defenders in the endzone with Roy Roundtree would be a good idea. Plus, Michigan was playing defense on every other play instead of just one out of four, which seemed to be enough to contain Mississippi State. I resumed watching the Capital One Bowl after that and I guess I missed another slaughter. I flipped back to this near the end of the first half and saw Michigan fumble the ball with three seconds left, down 31-14. I hear the rest of the game was even worse.
• Rose Bowl: I was greatly impressed by the number of people in the stands who were either fans of TCU or people who wanted Wisconsin to large. TCU is a larger university than I thought it was. They deserve to be in a conference with, "Big," in the name (and I don't mean, "Sky"). This reminded me of the Michigan State-Wisconsin game in that TCU appeared to be the physically superior team despite being smaller. Wisconsin probably could have won if they'd made fewer mistakes (dropped pass on first drive, failed 2-point conversion attempt, onside kick that went directly to a TCU player), but that doesn't make them the better team. This was a really bad day for the Big Ten. I heard the TCU band play Eat 'Em Up, though.
• Fiesta Bowl: I wanted to see UConn utterly demolished in this game to make Michigan State look better. Unfortunately, they were not. I have decided to blame the Big 12. It looked like UConn was peaking and Oklahoma slapped themselves around a little bit. That made this game the sort of blowout that I had hoped Michigan State would suffer in the worst case. There was never any doubt which team was better (Oklahoma), but the weaker team did just well enough that the game didn't become uninteresting until the clock had wound most of the way down. The other thing to note from this game is that even with a bad matchup and a Big East team involved, the stadium seemed pretty active. Getting to the BCS is a good thing.
• Orange Bowl: The announcers had three questions on their minds during this game: (1) Where will Jim Harbaugh coach next year? (2) Will Stanford be distracted by the controversy around their head coach? and (3) Isn't Andrew Luck just great? At the time, there was no conclusive answer to #1, so any time spent speculating about it was wasted. It didn't take too long for Stanford to start thrashing Virginia Tech, so the answer to #2 was, "Not distracted enough." The announcers seemed to struggle with the controversy, though, as one of them kept confusing Jim with his brother, John. As for #3, I'd have to say, "Yeah, probably." He can be a spectacular player. He can also decide to throw a pass directly at a defender while being sacked (fortunately, that pass was dropped). I guess he has another year to work on that before he graduates to the pro game, though. Also, I have to give some credit to Tyrod Taylor for doing some of the best scampering that I've seen from a quarterback. That's a valuable asset when the performance of your offensive line varies between ridiculous 10-second protection and literally falling down. Finally, based on the end of the game, it appears that Jim Harbaugh is not above running up the score on an opponent that nobody thought had a chance of winning. The NFL can keep him.
• Sugar Bowl: I think I saw someone in the stands holding a sign that read," GO LSU HOGS." That put me in the right mindset for the second quarter, in which Arkansas was unable to match Ohio State's SEC speed. Arkansas definitely could/should have won this game, though. In the second half, they were clearly a better football team. I don't know what happened to them before that. I guess it may have had something to do with a lot of Ryan "The Hammer" Mallett's passes being either interceptions or perfectly-thrown drops. Meanwhile, in the fourth quarter, Ohio State managed to completely botch a snap (at least, I think it was Ohio State: my notes simply say, "BUTTSNAP!" and it took me a few days to get around to posting this), send their tailback over a first-down-line pileup without the football, and suffer a block on probably the most important punt of their season. In the end, though, Arkansas had the greater desire to lose (another pick from The Hammer) and the Big Ten finished their bowl season with a record no worse than the Big 12's. What was Ohio State's reward? Having Holly Rowe ask Terrell Pryor, "What's going on with your leg?" while being supported by two teammates because he was clearly in too much pain to support himself. I wouldn't complain about sportscasters so often if they didn't keep giving me reasons.
• GoDaddy.Com Bowl: It doesn't look like the cupboard is going to be completely bare for Don Treadwell next year. It is evident that Miami has some talented players. That said, he has a long way to go if he hopes to get Miami up to the same level of recognition as even the other Miami. I hope he is not so ambitious (in the short term, anyway). Going back to Mid-Major Madness after watching four straight BCS games was almost painful and I wish there were some way to force the lower-tier bowls back into December.
• Cotton Bowl: The variation in quality of the post-New-Year's-Day bowls in considerable, at least in terms of venue and fan support and so forth. The Cotton Bowl is one of the good bowls in that regard, despite being flanked by web hosting and hunger. The game was perhaps not so deserving of such attention, however. Texas A&M was up 10-0 when I first flipped it on, but after that, LSU was the dominant team almost all the way. A&M showed a little brilliance with a fourth-quarter touchdown drive that had some spectacular plays, but by that point, the game was long over and Les Miles had probably put himself in at defensive end. From what I saw, I am actually surprised that A&M was able to build that early lead.
• Fight Hunger Bowl: This bowl has a kind of silly name. I'm pretty sure I saw or heard a sports-type-person make fun of it at least once; for example, I made fun of it when discussing the Cotton Bowl just now. Its contract puts the sixth Pac-10 team against an annually rotating independent or mid-major (if available). It is also the last bowl before the championship game, which makes it more visible/mockable. However, this actually wasn't a bad game. Nevada tied for the WAC championship. They aren't a bad team. Boston College isn't great, but they didn't play terrible football, and the game was competitive even though it looked like Nevada was going to win through most of it. Also, there were enough fans in the seats to make the game look and sound like people were excited about it. You could do worse when choosing a bowl game to watch.
• BCS National Championship Game: I would consider this game less interesting than the Fight Hunger Bowl, for example. The first quarter was, well, bad. I understand that when the top two teams in the country face each other, it's unrealistic to expect to see an unbroken series of jaw-dropping plays. One team will act to cancel the other's efforts. However, I was expecting to see well-executed football, and in the first quarter, I saw shades of the Hawai'i Bowl. The teams improved a bit after that, but it didn't seem like there was a lot of energy in the stadium, which is odd an thing to see when two big schools play for a national championship. Maybe ESPN had the crown microphones turned way down. Finally, if you don't mind, I'd like to attempt a bit of football analysis. Oregon won games most of the season by firing a barrage of quick plays at opposing defenses. In this game, they did not appear to be hurrying up to any significant degree. If anything, Auburn was getting their snaps off more quickly. My theory for how this happened is that Oregon's offense slowed down to double-check play calls and avoid making mistakes. In doing so, they nullified their main offensive advantage and hence couldn't put up the 30-40 points that many people probably expected. On the other hand, I saw a couple plays where Auburn defensive backs chased down and tackled Oregon receivers to prevent touchdowns, so maybe Oregon was too slow to play the SEC champ — and I mean that seriously this time. I was pulling for Oregon, being an old enough Big Ten guy to think that Big Ten vs. Pac-10 is supposed to be the premiere matchup, but between this and the Slaughter Bowl, I'm pretty well convinced of the SEC's current dominance. My current hope is that enough schools will drop games next year for TCU to get a shot at ending the SEC's streak. They've got as good a chance of doing it as anyone.

To close, here are some meaningless statistics:

• Bowls played: 35.
• Bowls watched (partially or fully): 33.
• Watched-vs.-played record, scaled to 13 games: 12-1. That should be good enough for the armchair BCS.
• Bowls where the name makes the tie-in to a specific corporate entity immediately obvious: 8.
• Probability that I will not slip up and call the Capital One Bowl the, "Citrus Bowl," at least once next season: (pending assessment by an actuarial).
• Bowl records of conferences with, "Big," in their names: 3-5, Big Ten; 3-5, Big 12; 4-2, Big East.
• Bowl record of Big Ten teams against Big 12 teams: 2-1.
• Probability of the sports media as a whole considering the Big Ten a stronger conference than the Big 12 next year: 0.
• Probability of the sports media as a whole considering the Big East stronger than either of the other two conferences: 0.
• Number of college football games that I could stand to watch in the next eight months after tuning into 33 of them in just over three weeks: 0.