2014 Peach Bowl results: TCU embarrasses Ole Miss

In the regular season, the SEC West was a perfect 28-0 in non-conference games. When the league was en route to its flawless out-of-conference performance, some numbskull was using the Simple Rating System to ask whether the division was the best since conferences started splitting in half.

Unfortunately for those people who staked out the position that the West was something special in 2014, bowl season was a disaster. It started well enough, with the two bottom finishers in the West -- Arkansas and Texas A&M -- winning their postseason games, the former in utterly dominating fashion. When LSU lost to Notre Dame on a last second field goal on December 30, it marked the first time in 31 games that an SEC West team had lost to a non-conference opponent.

Poor Mississippi. It could have been perfect, it should have been perfect. Ole Miss AND Mississippi State both ringing in the New Year with bowl games? Hoo, buddy!

Then it all went south -- Southeastern Conference, that is. Ole Miss got blown out, Paul Johnson wants to stop hearing about the SEC and New Year’s Grieve was born.

It’s okay Mississippi, there’s always next year. 365 days from now.

The major bowls began on Wednesday, and the narratives flowed like New Year’s Eve champagne. Here’s a look at Wednesday’s key numbers.

Georgia Tech headed into Wednesday night’s Orange Bowl battle with the No. 1 offense in the country, according to Off. F/+. The Yellow Jackets had averaged 6.1 yards per play against Virginia Tech (No. 4 in Def. F/+) and 5.8 against Clemson (No. 1), and they had emasculated lesser defenses: 8.9 against North Carolina (No. 108), 8.1 against Pitt (No. 73), 7.6 against NC State (No. 70), 7 against Georgia Southern (No. 74). Paul Johnson doesn’t recruit many blue-chippers, and he runs the opposite of a trendy offense, but his spread option clicked as never before.

Think TCU might have been motivated by their playoff snub? The Horned Frogs played Ole Miss out of the park in Wednesday’s Peach Bowl, putting together the most dominating performance of the postseason in a 42-3 victory. The Rebels gave up 168 points in the regular season, and TCU totaled 25% of that output in Wednesday’s game.

TCU made the game’s first three big plays early on, setting the tone for the rest of the game. Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace was picked off by Chris Hackett over the middle on the Rebels’ first drive, and TCU was able to capitalize with a double pass touchdown to Aaron Green. Green scored another touchdown on the Frogs’ next drive, and TCU expanded their lead to 21-0 with an early second quarter passing touchdown.

Via ESPN

This is the very bottom.

TCU’s smashing Ole Miss so badly (42-0 so far!), it’s running out of taunts. Here’s Paul Dawson stealing the Rebels’ Landshark hand sign:

Jason Getz, USA Today

The Ole Miss offense has been struggling against TCU in the first half of the Peach Bowl, and things have gotten worse for the Rebels. Star left tackle Laremy Tunsil, the team’s best healthy offensive player, was carted off the field after his leg was rolled up on late in the second quarter of the game.

A two-year starter and two-time All-SEC selection, Tunsil was a highly regarded recruit coming out of high school who was a part of the Rebels’ historic 2013 recruiting class. Tunsil was rated as the fourth-best player in the country and the best offensive tackle in the nation coming out of Columbia (Fla.), according to the 247Sports composite.

As if the day couldn’t get any worse for poor Ole Miss QB Bo Wallace. Now Johnny Football himself is piling on. :(

The score in the Peach Bowl is 28-0, TCU, in the second quarter after some of the worst BAD BO in history:

That’s 248-pound James McFarland bringing in the easiest six he’ll ever score.

Ole Miss also has more penalty yards than total yards in the first half of the Peach Bowl, which isn’t so hard to do when you only have 13 yards of offense.

The Rebels’ defense is even giving the offense opportunites. They have forced three turnovers in the first half, the most recent of which gave Ole Miss the ball near their own end zone. TCU’s defense forced way too much pressure on quarterback Bo Wallace, who threw an interception in his own end zone for another score.

TCU is walloping Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl, winning 21-0 in the first half with two forced turnovers. The Horned Frogs have dominated in just about every phase, outgaining the Rebels 187-9 midway through the second quarter.

After one of a number of big defensive plays, sophomore defensive tackle Tevin Lawson taunted the Rebels by using their “Landshark” celebration.

TCU has gotten off to a hot start in their highly anticipated Peach Bowl matchup with Ole Miss, picking off a pass on the Rebels’ first drive and then pulling off a double pass touchdown to take the lead.

Former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, now in the booth with ESPN, knew it would be a scoring play nearly instantly -- before wide receiver Kolby Listenbee completed the pass to Aaron Green. (Click bottom right for audio.)

The big games are here. New Year’s Eve has arrived, and with it come some of the most highly-anticipated matchups of bowl season. Three top-20 teams square off Wednesday, with each game being broadcast on ESPN and streamed on WatchESPN.

Things kick off at 12:30 p.m. ET with the return of the Peach Bowl, as two teams who barely missed the playoff field will face off in Atlanta. Top-10 programs Ole Miss and TCU will clash in a game that will see two of the nation’s top defenses pitted against each other. The Rebels likely have the edge defensively, but the Horned Frogs have one of the best playmakers in the nation at quarterback in Trevone Boykin.

The New Year’s Six bowls begin on Wednesday, completing the slow, steady ramping up of bowl season. After Stage 1 of bowl season (pre-Christmas, mid-major battles) came a fun Stage 2 (post-Christmas games between mostly 7-5 and 8-4 power teams). Now it’s time for the two-day, Stage 3 main event.

Here are the most important matchups for Wednesday’s bowls.

On the other side of the ball, Ole Miss can put up points too. They’re without their best wide receiver in Laquon Treadwell, who broke his leg against Auburn, but they can still beat you all over the field. TCU’s defense has been very good at turning teams over, so they’ll try to force the Rebels into mistakes.

Game time: 12:30 p.m. ET

One of the fascinating and enjoyable aspects of bowl season comes when teams from different conferences with different styles are thrown together. Sometimes the results of those clashes are pretty predictable, such as in the 2004 Holiday Bowl.

Aaron Rodgers had just ripped Mack Brown for politicking Texas over Cal to the Rose Bowl as the QB led his team against one of Mike Leach’s Texas Tech teams. The Bears were ill-prepared to handle the spread passing offense, still considered a gimmick, and Tech QB Sonny Cumbie threw for 520 yards and three TDs in a 45-31 victory over future All-Pro Rodgers.

Mississippi State won 10 games in 2014. Florida won six. That’s unusual for both schools, but don’t tell Mississippi State head coach (and former Florida coordinator) Dan Mullen. His defensive coordinator, Geoff Collins, was hired away by new Florida head coach Jim McElwain, and Mullen had something to say about it Tuesday:

Bowl season can make for some pretty crazy travel plans for college football teams. Geography isn’t always a major factor in bowl decisions, but the new College Football Playoff selection committee took locality into account when creating parts of the six biggest bowls, the New Year’s Six (the two Playoff games and four other major games).

Here’s a look at which NY6 teams made out the best, which ones had the most brutal travel plans, and which fans will just get to take a short bus trip.

The Coaches Poll has long been a place for tomfoolery and score-settling. When the poll decided part of the national championship, that meant such things as three coaches* dropping an undefeated Michigan out of the top two in order to get Tom Osborne a share of the title.

During the BCS era, that could be a problem, as the poll was one of the formula’s three factors. But now that the championship is decided by the College Football Playoff, the poll has far less meaning. That has hardly stopped coaches from gaming the system. Here’s a look at the final ballots.

We at SB Nation love bowls for one simple reason: they’re college football games. If there were fewer bowl games, there would be fewer college football games before the eight-month offseason void. We welcome bowls of all shapes, sizes, locales, and levels of importance. You don’t have to watch Utah State vs. UTEP, but we damn sure will.

Still, there are watchable bowls, and there are less watchable bowls. I’m here to help you differentiate.

The Chick-fil-A Bowl is now the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl as the College Football Playoff finally arrives.

While the Peach Bowl won’t be one of the national semifinal hosts this season, it was assigned to host an at-large team and a Group of Five team, which is one of the best teams from the AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West or Sun Belt. Historically, the Peach Bowl, or whatever it was being called at the time, hosted an ACC and SEC school in Atlanta.