It's Bowl Season!

UGAPilot wrote:The fact that Reynolds wasn't even in the top three for the Heisman was really upsetting. I thought he deserved earned it more than anyone else.

Especially considering his front line was often outweighed by nearly 100 pounds per man....

DoubleDipper wrote:The bowl game in Albuquerque between New Mexico and Arizona was good, but the best bowl game so far this season, especially if you like to watch the military academies, was the Navy win over Pitt today.

DD, I'm sure you'll be ready for the Armed Forces bowl today. Cal vs. Air Force!

up7587 wrote:

DoubleDipper wrote:The bowl game in Albuquerque between New Mexico and Arizona was good, but the best bowl game so far this season, especially if you like to watch the military academies, was the Navy win over Pitt today.

DD, I'm sure you'll be ready for the Armed Forces bowl today. Cal vs. Air Force!

The DVR has me covered for the entire bowl season, but yea, as Cal and the USAFA are two of my favorite schools, I'm all-in for today's game.

Watched parts of four bowl games yesterday, none of which could be called “exciting” games, but all of which included some stellar performances that were fun to watch.

Cal’s QB throws for over 450 yards and 6 TDs in their win over Air Force.

Baylor mauls UNC without a quarterback, but rushes for almost 650 yards, including one kid who goes for 299 yards, one more than he needed to go over 1,000 for the season.

LSU’s Heisman candidate bowls Texas Tech over while running for 5 TDs.

And in the least fun to watch, but closest game of the day Nevada, scored a TD with just one minute left in the game for the win as Colorado St. let the clock run out while on the Wolfpack’s 12 yard line.

Four more bowls today, but the game with the most interest here is probably the Holiday Bowl with USC and Wisconsin going at it in what should be a good old Big-10/Pac-10 mini-Rose Bowl.

Least fun to watch because it was broadcast in standard def to select markets and people with sports packages, or because who wants to watch to conference opponents play each other in a bowl game? Not bitter.

Four bowl games today, but only one of them, Wisconsin's two point win over USC, was exciting to watch.

It's too bad the best game had the worst announcers....I thought they'd never shut up, and they didn't.  I don't even want to know who they were, but they'd get so excited I thought they were going to pee their pants.....but I guess they just kept jumping up and down and repeating themselves over and over instead.

Best bowl game yet was the Peach Bowl today.  Houston never got much respect this year competing in the American Conference, but their 38-24 win over FSU was pretty convincing, but still closer than the score would indicate.

Watching Clemson and Oklahoma.....Sooners lead at the half (watching it delayed), but Clemson looks very, very good!

So far the best bowl games this season are still the Military Bowl, (Navy over Pitt), and the Peach Bowl (Houston over FSU)…..everything else, including the National Championship semi-finals, have been pretty lopsided, and except for some excellent individual performances, have been less than memorable.
 
I haven’t watched all the games, but can anyone think of better, more competitive, bowl games this season?

Duke-Indiana was very competitive.  I saw the finish, and was glad Duke won after IU players showboated earlier.

Wisconsin-USC also came down to the final plays.  And again, I was glad to see USC lose.  Has there ever been a bigger collection of talented, underperforming players than USC?

Ohio St-Notre Dame was a tough one today.  Can't stand Coach Kelly.  Don't like OSU and Urban either, so had to root against both teams. Most over-rated team lost.

up7587 wrote:Duke-Indiana was very competitive.  I saw the finish, and was glad Duke won after IU players showboated earlier.

Wisconsin-USC also came down to the final plays.  And again, I was glad to see USC lose.  Has there ever been a bigger collection of talented, underperforming players than USC?

Ohio St-Notre Dame was a tough one today.  Can't stand Coach Kelly.  Don't like OSU and Urban either, so had to root against both teams. Most over-rated team lost.

Oh, I totally forgot about the Holiday Bowl (Wisconsin over USC)....yes that too was a good one, but I'm a Pac-12/West Coast guy.

I thinks sometime to outcome of a game might cloud our judgement of a game overall.....

The Heisman Memorial Trophy Award is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.

Before the bowl season started I would have voted for 1. Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, 2. Navy’s Keenan Reynolds, and 3. Alabama’s Derrick Henry.

Admittedly, I saw McCaffrey and Reynolds a lot more than Henry this year, but based solely on the bowl games so far, I stand by my (imaginary) vote.

It would appear that Henry will be the better NFL player, but to me McCaffrey and Reynolds, who both attend top academic institutions, were the better old school college players….with the academics to match.

(I’m not saying Alabama is not a top academic institution, but I have a close relative who graduated from 'Bama…..just saying).

The Alamo Bowl.....finally, an exciting bowl game between two ranked teams playing their backup quarterbacks!!

But the big difference in my mind, UO was also playing their backup center.....and of course, UO's porous defense.

Only watched UO twice this year, and the other time the Ducks let up something like 60 points to Utah.

Forty-one bowl games and the 41st, the Cactus Bowl, was the best, IMO.

It was a back and forth shoot-out in the desert, with West Virginia scoring last to beat ASU 43-42.....after the refs conferred for a minute or two and picked up the flag.

Clemson vs. Alabama tonight for the National Crown...

Alabama is the prohibitive favorite, but I wouldn't cast aside any chance of the Tigers pulling the upset.

My first year living in South Carolina (1982) was right after the 1981 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with the Clemson Tigers, unbeaten and untied, claiming the national championship after a victory over Nebraska in the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

The southeast has always been football crazy, but if the South Carolinians can go as crazy at the game this evening like they did 34 years ago, Clemson has a chance.

Yes, I've got more than one Alabama alum in the family, but I'd love to see the trophy go back to South Carolina.

I forgot the game was today until this morning when I heard about it on the radio; too many distractions and the prelim games were so long ago.  Lot less buzz for a regional game with 2 teams from the south.  Hope it's a good game to watch.

So, we have had zero discussion of CFB bowls this year. And there have not been many good ones so far. Notably, for west coast regional interest, the Pac-12 is not showing well in the bowls. Oregon lost by 10 to Boise St. Utah did beat West Virginia. UCLA lost by 18 to Kansas St. Arizona lost by 3 to Purdue. Stanford lost by 2 to TCU. And Washington St lost by 25 to Michigan St.

Two more today, NC State beats, oops, plays Arizona St in the Sun Bowl, and USC plays Ohio St. in the Cotton Bowl. I think there's a good chance for two more Pac-12 losses. ASU is a coaching mess. And the Cotton Bowl will depend on if OSU is mad about being left out of the playoff and wants to show they should have been picked, or if they're not excited to be playing in an exhibition game. I.E, they'll win if they want to.

Last Pac-12 game is tomorrow, when Washington plays Penn St. in the Fiesta Bowl.

There are a couple other good games coming up, mostly the Monday games, concluding with the two playoff games.

I’m kicking myself that I am in St. Pete and leaving the Tampa Bay Area one day ahead of the SC-Michigan bowl game. I haven’t watched a single snap of bowl games so far this year. For those that remember my past a bit, I will be rooting for Georgia in the playoff!

And, two more double digit losses for the Pac-12. Arizona St. lost to N.C. State 52-31, and USC lost to Ohio St. 24-7.

up7587 wrote:And, two more double digit losses for the Pac-12.  Arizona St. lost to N.C. State 52-31, and USC lost to Ohio St. 24-7.  

Yeah, those two games and many others so far this postseason have been real snoozers!

I've probably watched parts of all the games, but only a few stand out as exciting....and that may be in part because of who I was rooting for.

I really like Navy, Army, Northwestern (over Kentucky), TCU (over Stanford), Duke (over N. Illinois), and Boston College (a loser to Iowa), so I watched most of those game.  Two games I watched every minute of were the very competitive/back and forth game between Army and San Diego St that Army won with a TD and 2-point conversion with 18 seconds left, and the game some might have found boring, Navy's blowout Virginia.

Always hard to say how competitive the bowl games will be, especially now that it has become common for NFL candidates to sit out the games to avoid injury.  

Two games Saturday that should be good are UW vs. Penn St. in the Fiesta Bowl and Wisconsin vs. Miami in the Orange Bowl. I'm rooting for the Huskies and the Badgers.  

I'm rooting for Georgia and Clemson to win the semifinals on Monday, but I understand most of the pundits are favoring Alabama to take it all on the following Monday.  

With all the televised basketball games and bowl games going on at one time, it's a great time of year....that is unless your family expects you to pay some attention to them.

DD wrote:It's too bad the best game had the worst announcers...

Bill Walton does football?

Haha, reading your signature line by old Pliny (FYI it is Plinus with 2 i's). Found out he died in the Vesuvius eruption. Hope he had a good drink when it happened. Cheers.

Geezaldinho wrote:Bill Walton does football?

Last night he was "doing" the WSU/UCLA basketball game....

Probably a really great guy, but

Finally caught up with the day's games thanks to the invention of the DVR....

I was surprised Louisville did so well against #23 Mississippi State before losing, 31-27.....in the Taxslayer Bowl??

The #20 Memphis loss to Iowa State in the Liberty Bowl was not a big surprise, but it was only the 3rd loss of the season for the Tigers.

Was rooting for #11 UW today in the Fiesta Bowl, but it's really nice to see #9 Penn State back as one of the elite teams after their 35-28 win.

As expected, the best game of the day was the Orange Bowl won by #6 Wisconsin, 34-24.  It was very surprising the #10 Miami coach was not tossed for making deliberate and aggressive contact with an official.  I don't know if there are fines for college coaches, but I would imagine some action will be taken.  

In basketball, after earlier watching one of the best games of the season as #4 Duke beat #24 Florida State, and watching Rev's Georgia Tech team fall to Notre Dame in South Bend, I watched #17 Arizona upset previously unbeaten #3 Arizona State in Tucson.  There are now zero undefeated D1 teams in America!

I was about to say it was a good day for sports, but then I remembered the Pilots game.....

More TV football, DD?
Bowl games...
You've already seen like a hundred of them!
But these are the ones that count!
Then why did you watch all the others?
Um, because.....



....and I like to remember the old days too

up7587 wrote:Haha, reading your signature line by old Pliny (FYI it is Plinus with 2 i's). Found out he died in the Vesuvius eruption. Hope he had a good drink when it happened. Cheers.

Depends where you look.

I’ve seen his name with one ( Rowell’s Library classification of authors) two, and three i’s. It also shows with a j replacing one i.

Also, his first given name shows as Gaius, Caius, Gajus, and Cajus. All were apparently pronounced the same. Roman spelling wasn’t any more settled than Lewis and Clark’s
( see the 13 spellings of Sacajawea). The letter L also sometimes substituted for I. He was from lake Como (then lake Larius) , not Roman, strictly speaking. That was Greek country.

To make it worse, Pico Brewing co. makes a Plinius the Elder double IPA.

Pliny  had a big meal, no doubt accompanied by wine , then napped at a  cousin’s villa while waiting for the winds to change so they could sail away from Stabiae, about 4.5 miles from Pompeii. Maybe he was he hung over.
He sailed there in a fast cutter to save the cousin, but the same winds that got him there trapped them.

He apparently was quite corpulent and suffered from Asthma and when it was decided they should leave, he sat down on the way to the Boat and couldn’t be moved. His companions left him and sailed to safety. His body was found covered by ash  four days later when the eruption subsided. His nephew wrote a slightly more flattering account blaming toxic fumes which killed no one else in the party.

He seems to have hated beer, thinking it fit only for barbarians, although he is credited with giving hops its first Latin taxonomy of Lupus Salictarius (“wolf of the willows” ) . He was trying to grow salictaria as a headache remedy but the hop vines (bines, for the sticklers) kept choking them out. Willow is the natural source for Salicylic acid, aka aspirin.
To Pliny, hops was just a weed.

Hop’s current Linnaean taxonomy is humulus lupulus, apparently from an old German word for hops and “a small wolf”. I figure Linnaeus read Pliny.