Unhealthy diet of bowls is satifying
Scooter Hobbs
Come on, Bowl Season.
You know I love you. I always have.
You’re my shining light. My reason for getting through the holiday season, even socially distanced, even during a pandemic.
The word “meaningless” is not uttered in this foxhole.
No sir, not when there’s a Duke’s Mayo Bowl looming with a Countdown to Wednesday.
The more the Merrier Christmas, we always say in these parts.
But, really, Bowl Season, you’re going to have to do better than what we’ve seen so far.
And we don’t ask for much.
It’s extra college football and that’s usually enough to keep the NBA at bay for another month or so.
Yes, it’s a watered-down Bowl Season, with many of the bowls opting out in deference to COVID-19.
But it’s the best we’ve got and we’ve got to keep paying attention, lest the high-brow “meaningless” crowd makes political hay out of the 2020 struggles.
Rat poison, I say.
It kind of caught us off guard when the Myrtle Beach Bowl (Appalachian State 56, North Texas 28) seemingly started about 10 minutes after the bowl lineup was announced.
For one brief shining moment before throwing in the towel after South Carolina had to recuse itself for something other than a 2-8 record, the Gasparilla Bowl had a coveted alphabetic matchup of:
UAB
vs.
TBA
Sadly, TBA turned out to be Nobody Wanted to Play and the bowl was ditched.
There likely will be others as we bravely trudge through this thing.
I did not have time to wait on Thursday’s New Mexico Bowl, which was played in Texas, and maybe it delivered.
The Rose Bowl, of all things, will also be played in Texas.
Block out the noise, is all I can say.
But is it too much to ask for a little suspense?
Myrtle Beach, better known for Putt-Putt golf, kind of set the postseason football tone.
Scanning the score wire we see BYU 49, UCF 23 in the Boca Raton Bowl, Georgia Southern 38, Louisiana Tech 3 in the New Orleans Bowl, Memphis 25, Florida Atlantic 10 in the Montgomery Bowl.
Hang in there. Better football should be coming.
Whether it gets better or not, we will always have the 2020 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
It overcame the hardship of playing on Boise State’s gosh-awful blue Smurf turf to provide us with what may have to stand for the bowl season’s defining moment.
Speaking of which, I have been to Boise. Twice.
The locals there will tell you that confused (or perhaps very dumb) seagulls will occasionally dive-bomb the Smurf turf in search of a mid-afternoon snack.
The locals do not explain what seagulls are doing in Idaho in the first place — and I forgot to ask — but there is someone whose job, possibly part-time, is to occasionally look for and dispose of the carcasses.
It may be an old wives’ tale that they delight in trying out on visiting media rubes, but they stand by it.
Anyway, any lost seagulls would have done well to have stopped by the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl’s festivities.
The game was uneventful, somewhat sloppy, particularly on Tulane’s part against Nevada.
But that’s not important now.
At the end of a trying day, the Green Wave can now say that they were there, even if as innocent bystanders, for the first known stoppage of play in a football game to clear the field of French fries.
There were enough of them there, apparently lightly salted, to feed the French army and all the stray seagulls in Idaho.
Borrowing on the dry-Gatorade-bath theme made famous in the Cheez-it Bowl, the Nevada lads dumped a water cooler full of French fries on head coach Jay Norvell.
It made quite a mess, obviously, and it was quite a spectacle to get the field back into playing shape.
Wise football minds must have addressed this in the rule book, as dumping enough French fries on the field to halt play with 17 seconds remaining is deemed unsportsmanlike conduct — 15 yards the other way.
Or maybe Tulane did not want fries with that.
But the offended Green Wave, wisely running away from the French-fry debris and with seagulls circling overhead, responded by dashing 65 yards for an extra-crispy touchdown.
It only cut the final score to 38-27. But, much like the dangers of opponents’ shoe-throwing had its signature moment in the LSU-Florida game, perhaps that in-your-face touchdown will act as a deterrent for future generations not to waste edible French Fries on premature celebrations.
And something good will have come from this awkward 2020 season.
Anyway, Notre Dame-Alabama and Clemson-Ohio State have a hard act to follow.
l
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU
athletics. Email him at
shobbs@americanpress.com