Though, to be totally honest, I'm cool with Arkansas getting a bowl game because I like Sam Pittman that much. Also, this is an old school SWC reunion.
The Texas Bowl always seems to do a solid job finding interesting storylines for its game with a local connection. Both of these teams have been extremely profitable for gamblers as well with each ATS this year. That despite Arkansas being an underdog in all 10 games it played. The only bowl that would be more apropos for Wisconsin to play in than the Mayo Bowl would be the Cheese Bowl. As for the game itself, this matchup could be fun because it's two fundamentally different styles.
Wisconsin is looking to beat you up and tends to move at a slower pace. Wake Forest wants to move quickly and isn't as much interested in playing defense as it is outscoring you. The Demon Deacons averaged It's traditional school colors of black and gold are a fine combination in a vacuum, but the fact of the matter is that the combo pales compared to black and yellow.
I'm afraid the Tigers will realize this going up against Iowa and have a crisis of confidence. I can't rank this higher because I also fear it's a bit of a mismatch. Northwestern fans are about to spit at their screens, but even after the Wildcats' performance against Ohio State , I think Iowa finished the regular season playing like the second-best team in the Big Ten.
Those five are a combined When playing teams that finished with a winning record, like Iowa has, the Tigers were and outscored by 78 points. So, there could be some "feeling sorry for themselves" letdown potential from these teams.
Thankfully, they have coaches in Marshall's Doc Holliday and Buffalo's Lance Leipold who aren't likely to let that happen. As is always the case when two of the Group of Five's best teams meet, we've got that sneaky potential for a great game. Patterson has rushed for 1, yards and 19 touchdowns this season, which doesn't strike you as anything incredible until you realize Buffalo has only played six games. His The numbers look pretty incredible now, don't they?
If you've followed college football closely this year, you've heard plenty about teams like Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina and BYU. You've heard about how the CFP has disrespected them and ignored them. Well, San Jose State might be the most ignored team of all in It finished and won the Mountain West, but since the conference started later than those other three Group of Five powers, it was lost in the shuffle.
This is a strong Spartans team we're dealing with here, but even if this is a matchup of conference champions, I can't rank it higher than this. It could be close, but I don't expect it to be stressful.
Nevada had a strong season, even if it didn't finish as well as it started. The Wolf Pack have lost two of their last three, but one of those losses came to a very good San Jose State. It's one of the best trios in the Group of Five. Then there's Tulane, which always has a fun offense to watch due to its creativity. Michael Pratt is having an excellent season at QB for the Green Wave, and they have several different weapons on offense, including brothers named Deuce and Phat Watts.
What isn't to love? Texas might be ranked 20th, but Longhorns fans had much higher hopes for this team. Those hopes died early with consecutive losses to TCU and Oklahoma in a start.
The Horns played better down the stretch, but it didn't matter much as there was still plenty of speculation about Tom Herman's job status. You know he wants to go out with a win. As for Colorado, where did the Buffaloes come from?
This is a team that unexpectedly lost its coach to another job in February after he'd only been there a year. Expectations were not high, but in a shortened season, the Buffs went and nearly reached the Pac Championship Game. Running back Jarek Broussard is second in the nation in rushing yards per game at Simply put, it was a crime when Army at was left out of a bowl game while SEC teams were getting spots.
If that alone wasn't all the proof you need to know why this season was really played, I don't know what else would show you. But I'm not here to grouse! I'm here to celebrate an Army team getting a chance to go for its 10th win of the season. This is an interesting matchup because, as you know, Army is an option team.
The Black Knights ran the ball on Well, West Virginia happens to have one of the best rushing defenses in the country. The Mountaineers, led by defensive linemen Dante and Darius Stills up front, ranked 13th nationally in success rate against the run. It's going to be strength on strength, and may the best team win. Instead, they're in the Outback Bowl against Ole Miss. But you know what? It might not be what Indiana wanted, but it might be awesome for us.
Every Ole Miss game is dumber than the last because Lane Kiffin just wants his team to have the ball so he can call plays. So the Rebels defense is very accommodating, allowing opponents to score quickly. Still, Indiana receivers Ty Fryfogle and Whop Philyor are expected to play, and both will have monster games against this Rebels secondary. If any game has the chance to break points, this is it. Plus, the last time these two met in a bowl game, it was pretty epic.
Auburn won the Outback Bowl in overtime, but the OT came after Northwestern rallied from 14 points down in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter. It's hard to know how that will impact the team's preparation and motivation to play. If both teams show up interested in playing, this could be an exciting -- if low-scoring -- contest. If they don't, it could get ugly quickly.
That opponent was Liberty. I wanted to see the matchup between Coastal and Liberty because I felt it had the potential to get stupid in the best way possible. These are two entertaining and exciting offenses to watch as coaches Jamey Chadwell and Hugh Freeze are terrific play-callers.
Combined record of these teams? Want scoring? Liberty and Coastal put points on the board ranking 17th That Cheez-It Bowl, the one played in Arizona after 10 p. ET on a weeknight, is now the Guaranteed Rate Bowl and will not be played this season. Still, while I want to be angry about it and knock the game down a few pegs, I can't. It's a good matchup! Miami has had a good season thanks to transfer QB D'Eriq King , and while Oklahoma State's season faded a bit down the stretch, the Cowboys are good, too.
There is solid potential for an excellent game here, even if I'm never going to accept it as the real Cheez-It Bowl. Beware that this isn't your grandma's Oklahoma State team. The Cowboys allowed only That's their best performance since allowing So, since the show must go on, the Pac had Oregon step in even though Colorado had a better record than it did because Colorado and USC , who did not play one another this season, are in the same division.
Oregon then beat a USC team playing on a short week that had to prepare for two different teams the other being Washington. Caught up? None of this is to say Oregon is a bad team, because it's not. But it is a team that has had a lot of star players opt-out or get hurt. It will be facing an Iowa State squad that is quite good and had been in contention for a playoff spot until losing its rematch against Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game. Let's all hope Iowa State running back Breece Hall plays in the game, as he led the nation with 1, rushing yards this year.
I prefer the Orange Bowl option against North Carolina. Not only are these two more evenly-matched teams, but this is a matchup that could produce the best bowl game of the season. North Carolina's offense is explosive and fun to watch.
It can beat you on the ground and in the air while scoring 43 points per game. I'd take that over being a sacrificial lamb to the Tide every day of the week. When it comes to the New Year's Six, there's a lot on the line for teams and coaches.
Then there are games like the Boca Raton Bowl between two good teams that can just have fun because winning or losing isn't going to decide anybody's fate. They put up points in a hurry and were one of the potential Cinderella stories this year. BYU averaged 43 points per game.
Do the math there, and what you get is a game that should be a lot of fun. It just means that Georgia "didn't want to be there. If you have any questions, ask them now because I don't want any confusion later.
Seriously, though, this is a matchup I find quite interesting. Cincinnati is genuinely a good football team, and while I don't think it would have had a prayer of beating Alabama, I feel that way about generally everybody but maybe two teams.
Georgia is a good team as well, and it's been better since making the switch to J. Daniels at QB. I know I joked around about the narratives that will surround this game afterward, and there will be plenty more beforehand, but my advice is to just go in expecting a good college football game. Odds are you're going to get one. What's often ignored is that even though Clemson crushed the Irish in the College Football Playoff semifinals to add to that narrative, the same Clemson team went on to beat Alabama a week later.
It also ignores that Notre Dame beat Clemson earlier this season. Still, Alabama is something entirely different. It is an absolute matchup nightmare for every team in the country, and Notre Dame has a high mountain to climb. But I promise you, this Notre Dame team is not the team that Alabama crushed.
It's better. The game moved to the Louisiana Superdome in and has been held there every year since except for , when the tragedy and destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina forced the organizers to move the game to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Tulane Stadium, which was officially closed in and was fully demolished by , had also hosted three Super Bowls and the NFL's New Orleans Saints from until The city of New Orleans is known and celebrated around the world for its vibrant Creole culture, its rich history of art and music and of course, the party that invades Bourbon Street and the French Quarter during Mardi Gras.
The Sugar Bowl has seen one fewer national champion than the Orange Bowl, with a total of 28 to date. Alabama and LSU are currently tied for the most appearances all-time with 13 apiece, though the Crimson Tide hold the edge in wins eight to six and national championships earned in the contest five to three. Interestingly enough, the greatest Sugar Bowl game to date featured a team from the SEC on the losing side of the ledger.
That game, the Sugar Bowl, still stands as one of the greatest college football games of all time. In that game, second-ranked Penn State edged top-ranked Georgia, , on the way to the national championship in what was then a de facto title game in a then-rare postseason meeting between the two top-ranked teams in college football. The Nittany Lions dominated the first half of the game before the Bulldogs narrowed the margin to in the third quarter. With his team's lead now tenuous, quarterback Todd Blackledge led Penn State to the end zone in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter to stretch the lead back to 10 points.
Georgia, with Herschel Walker in the backfield, would add one more score with remaining in the game, though a failed two-point conversion essentially sealed the deal and gave Joe Paterno his first national championship in Happy Valley. Tim Tebow's virtuoso performance in the Sugar Bowl may not have been particularly dramatic as far as the game was concerned, but it was darn impressive nonetheless.
The game served as something of a consolation for Florida after the Gators fell to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, thereby ceding the opportunity to defend their national championship. Though with the way Tebow played, you'd have never known he wasn't playing for another ring. Tebow torched Cincinnati for yards and three touchdowns through the air along with 51 yards and another score on the ground to help the Gators chomp and stomp all over the poor Bearcats by a final score of That performance was more than a fitting end to Tebow's career at Florida, which may one day go down as one of the greatest ever seen in the history of college football.
It was originally borne out of the frustration of the Western Athletic Conference, which had grown tired of watching member schools and conference champions get passed over for selection in postseason bowl games. Therefore, in , the powers that be in the WAC organized a bowl game with an automatic tie-in for their conference champion and fielded what turned out to be a rather exciting matchup between two ranked teams, Arizona State and Florida State.
The game truly came into its own in , when it hosted a de facto national championship game between Miami and Penn State, both of which were independents at the time. The Nittany Lions triumphed, , in what was then the most watched game in the history of college football.
From then on, the Fiesta Bowl became a key fixture in the college football postseason, slowly but surely overtaking the Cotton Bow Classic as the fourth-largest bowl game on the way to becoming a key member of the Bowl Championship Series.
Like many of the big bowl games, the Fiesta Bowl hasn't exactly escaped from controversy unscathed. As far as prevailing politics are concerned, several invitees boycotted the edition of the game when the state of Arizona refused to adopt the Martin Luther King Holiday. And most recently, the Fiesta Bowl came under fire when it was discovered that CEO John Junker, along with a number of other bowl officials, spent frivolously to curry favor with the powers that be in the BCS while also encouraging employees to make donations to certain political campaigns, a strict no-no for non-profit organizations.
Which, ironically enough, the Fiesta Bowl had not been, as it had managed to turn a profit and pass those earnings onto its higher-ups while most of its participants operated at a net loss.
The Fiesta Bowl has always found its home in Arizona, with only one move in its year history. In , the Fiesta Bowl moved on up to the brand-new University of Phoenix Stadium, where it has been held ever since. The Fiesta Bowl has hosted far fewer national champions than any of the other three BCS bowls and understandably so. After all, the Sugar and Orange Bowls are each 36 years older than the Fiesta Bowl and, technically speaking, the Rose Bowl is a whopping 69 years older.
The lead for most frequent visitor to the game consists of a four-way tie between Penn State, Arizona State, Nebraska and Oklahoma, though the Nittany Lions win out by way of their record in the Fiesta Bowl and their two national championships earned as a result of said victories. That being said, Penn State did not have the privilege of playing the best Fiesta Bowl game, which also happens to be one of the most entertaining games in the history of the sport.
The Fiesta Bowl was about as quintessential a David vs. Goliath matchup as you'll ever see in a bowl game. The role of David was played rather perfectly by WAC champion Boise State, which rode into the game with a record under first-year coach Chris Petersen.
Big 12 champion Oklahoma fell in naturally as Goliath, a powerhouse college football program that had persevered through a rather trying season during which the Sooners lost quarterback Rhett Bomar and running back Adrian Peterson, who returned in time for the game.
The Broncos stormed out to a rather commanding lead in the third quarter before Bob Stoops' squad answered with 25 unanswered points of their own to pull into the lead with less than two minutes remaining in the game. The last of the game was arguably the most exciting ever played in college football, with the Sooners scoring two touchdowns and succeeding with a two-point conversion to go from down eight points to up seven within the span of 24 seconds.
Immediately after throwing a pick-six to Oklahoma's Marcus Walker, Boise State quarterback Jared Zabransky managed to regroup and lead the Broncos on a stunning yard drive that culminated in a yard touchdown catch by Jerard Rabb on a hook-and-lateral with a mere seven seconds left in the game. The game fittingly went to overtime, during which the Sooners scored a touchdown on their opening drive, only to watch the Broncos run two more trick plays—a half-back pass for a touchdown and a Statue of Liberty play for a two-point conversion—to secure a stunning victory and etch Boise State into the history books as only the second school from a non-BCS conference to win in a top-four bowl game.
More importantly, the victory gave the Broncos a record for the season, thereby reinvigorating the debate in the college football world over whether or not the sport needs a legitimate playoff system and to what extent the BCS should be allowed to exclude teams from outside the Big Six conferences to compete for a national championship.
The legendary Nebraska quarterback earned his third straight MVP award in a national championship game by leading the Huskers to a demolition of Steve Spurrier's Gators, whose "Fun-N-Gun" offense convinced most pundits to pick Florida over the more traditionally ground-oriented Cornhuskers. Sure, most of the credit could reasonably go to the Black Shirt defense, which held Florida to minus yards rushing.
However, that wouldn't do any justice to the sheer brilliance of Frazier, who threw for yards and a touchdown and ran for yards and two more scores. The second of those rushing touchdowns came on perhaps the single most amazing carry in college football history seen above , as Frazier broke through seven tacklers before scampering 75 yards to the end zone.
It's no fluke that Frazier, arguably the most amazing athlete to ever play college football, owns the greatest performance in each of two top bowl games. C'mon, folks. There's really not much of a debate here, if there's one to be had at all. They don't call it the "Grand Daddy of Them All" for nothing. The Rose Bowl is far and away the oldest, most storied and most celebrated bowl game of them all, having hosted the most national championships at the most historic venue in college football.
Each of the other three, on the other hand, has found a new permanent home in the last 36 years. One could argue for the other three holding the edge in the "best game" or "best performance" categories, though even then it's not as though the stunning display of football put on by Vince Young and Texas against USC in can be dismissed as anything close to subpar.
Of course, this is but one man's opinion. Feel free to agree, disagree or remain entirely indifferent. Enjoy our content? Join our newsletter to get the latest in sports news delivered straight to your inbox! Your sports.
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