2014 Belk Bowl results: Georgia runs wild on Louisville

When your ranked team stomps another ranked team in a bowl game, as a head coach you usually start fielding questions about high expectations for next season. When you’re Georgia’s Mark Richt, people ask you if you’re retiring.

The Bulldogs beat Louisville 37-14 in the Belk Bowl Tuesday, led by 266 yards from true freshman running back Nick Chubb. Richt had some fun with the curious rumors, even bringing in his star running back into the conversation.

The 2014 season has been the Year of the Freshman Running Back, with five freshmen among the nation’s top 30 rushers (and 18 of the top 100) heading into Tuesday. And then they raised the bar on Tuesday, which saw bowl wins by Georgia over Louisville (37-14), Notre Dame over LSU (31-28), and Stanford over Maryland (45-21).

Nick Chubb finished his freshman season with 1,550 rushing yards. That’s the largest single-season total for any Georgia Bulldog not named Herschel Walker. Considering he wasn’t even the most touted running back in Georgia’s freshman class -- recruiting services rated Sony Michel slightly higher -- that’s an incredible feat. It’s made even more incredible considering he was a backup to one of the best players in college football, Todd Gurley, for half the season.

Louisville’s vaunted rush defense wasn’t able to hold up against Georgia’s ground attack, led by Chubb. The Bulldogs ran for 291 yards, more than three times what Louisville gave up on average in the regular season. Chubb got better as the game went on, and he finished the scoring with 45 yards and a touchdown on Georgia’s final drive of the game.

With the win, No. 13 Georgia improved to 10-3. No. 21 Louisville dropped to 9-4.

Georgia fans, who are noted aficionados of running yards and of the running backs who gain them, have been watching true freshman Nick Chubb dump 178 yards on Louisville so far in the Belk Bowl, including this 82-yard field-flipper that set up a Sony Michel touchdown.

Interim offensive coordinator John Lilly, filling in for the departed Mike Bobo, has made a favorable impression.

Coaches will tell you that the bowl is the first game of the next season. Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly took that to a logical extreme in explaining why he has chosen to give quarterback Malik Zaire his first career start in the Music City Bowl.

For Notre Dame, the difference between 7-6 and 8-5 is minimal. You might as well start figuring out what you’ve got for 2015.

Game time: 6:30 p.m. ET

TV: ESPN

Colorado State reportedly interviewed a number of candidates, including Oregon OC Scott Frost (who, according to the Post, was uninterested), Michigan State defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, Texas DC Vance Bedford, and Ohio State co-DC Chris Ash.

Colorado State went 10-2 under McElwain in 2014, marking the Rams’ first double-digit-win season since 2002. CSU then lost the Las Vegas Bowl to No. 22 Utah with OC Dave Baldwin as the interim coach.

The Belk Bowl isn’t typically thought well of when it comes to the upper echelon of December bowl games, but with conference tie-ins to the ACC and SEC (or a prominent at-large team from one of the big five conferences), it should probably be a bigger game on the national scale. This year, it will feature Louisville and Georgia, according to ESPN.

Date and time, ET: Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014, 6:30 p.m. ET