Dec. 28 bowl games: Louisville, Kansas State, Notre Dame, UNC win Saturday

Tyler Lockett’s listed weight. The Kansas State junior receiver might be, pound for pound, the best player in college football, and if he returns for his senior season (and one assumes he will), KSU fans have only his minimal pounds to thank for it.

Lockett is in no way of typical NFL size, and his name doesn’t exactly come up in mock-Draft discussions, but he might be the strongest combination of speed and route-running in college football right now.

This is, of course, the second time Bridgewater has created a ridiculous highlight in the last four weeks. Cincinnati still sees this throw in their nightmares.

Check out more on Bridgewater and where SB Nation sees him heading in our latest mock draft.

Kickers don’t always get to be on the field, but when they do, well... this can happen and it’s entertaining to say the least:

Kicker fight! Look at John Wallace get after it.

Update:

Hurst is considered an NFL prospect, and our own Mocking the Draft ranks him as the 50th-best player in the upcoming draft, which pegs him as a mid-to-late second round draft pick. He is also ranked as the sixth-best offensive tackle in the class by Mocking the Draft.

Cincinnati tried to make it a game with two of the next three touchdowns, but were stopped short near the goal-line with about ten minutes left in the game. That allowed North Carolina to run down clock and put the game out of reach.

Box Score Hero: T.J. Logan. The running back carried 15 times for 77 yards while also returning three kicks for 120 yards and a touchdown.

Chris Fowler might do the best job of any sports television person out there. ESPN throws him on camera with thousands of screaming idiots -- some of whom are on set with him -- and he keeps everything running, makes jokes sometimes and makes College GameDay excellent. (He also does tennis, which is the most different thing from college football, so that’s impressive.)

Suffice it to say, we are glad he did not die today at the Pinstripe Bowl:

Ryan Switzer isn’t interested in your guarantees.

The freshman let multiple defenders pass him by -- one even briefly touched him as he jogged past -- before hauling in the ball and bursting up the middle for the 86-yard touchdown, cementing his place in the record books with his fifth punt return touchdown of the season:

Box Score Hero:

Rankings Ramifications:

If you’re just now catching up on the Pinstripe Bowl, you could try watching a recording of the game (ha ha don’t do that) or looking at the box score (also NSFW), or you could just read some Nix.

Purple, as in the color Kelly’s face famously turns when things go awry for the Irish on the field. It’s a meme among fans and apparently players as well.

Bowl games involve weird things, like football players eating tons of food and Frank Beamer dancing in a sombrero. But of those things, Louisville lineman Jamon Brown singing John Legend’s “Ordinary People” at the Russell Athletic Bowl is the best thing we’ve seen.

I am male, and therefore was under the impression that it was physically impossible for me to get pregnant. However, I’m watching a 6’6, 350-pound man whose name is Spanish for ham singing the most romantic song ever, and I need an ambulance because I am about to give birth to triplets.

Brown was a deep reserve who hasn’t registered a tackle since 2012. Atkinson, meanwhile, racked up 555 yards on the season and averaged six yards per carry, but his playing time waned over the year in a crowded backfield.

The announcement was made only a few hours before kickoff, and Atkinson indicated in a now-deleted tweet that the decision happened at a recent meal:

If you are looking for snow to make the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium interesting in 2013 it’s not going to happen. In fact, the weather forecast for this afternoon’s game in the Bronx is quite nice for late December, lots of sunshine with afternoon temperatures reaching the upper 40s to near 50 degrees. Winds will be out of the west-southwest between 5 and 15 mph, there could be a few gusts that get above 15 mph but it shouldn’t be too windy. Weather doesn’t look like a major factor this year for the Pinstripe Bowl.

Conditions in New York, NY: Click here for Current Weather Conditions – Look at Doppler Radar |

This time last year, Kansas State and Michigan were preparing for big time bowl games in January. The Wildcats were headed to the Fiesta Bowl, while the Wolverines were set to play in the Outback Bowl.

Things didn’t go quite as well for either program in 2013. That being said, there will still be plenty of talent on the field when they meet in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl at Sun Devils Stadium. And with two passionate fan bases behind them, there should be a great crowd in attendance in Tempe.

When Louisville and Miami take the field in Orlando for the Russell Athletic Bowl, there will be a common theme: what could’ve been in 2013.

It’s rare to get two teams in a non-BCS bowl game that were both ranked in the top 10 at one point in the season. We’ll get a chance to see it happen in Orlando.

Cincinnati started the year with a blowout win over a Big Ten opponent and a blowout loss to another -- neither of whom made bowl games. After the win to Purdue and loss to Illinois, the Bearcats won eight of their next nine games, with their only loss coming to South Florida (who was winless at the time). Cincinnati had an outside shot at the AAC title and a BCS bowl bid in the last week of the season, but a loss to Louisville ended those hopes.

North Carolina had a very poor start to the year, opening 1-5 with a blowout loss to East Carolina. The Tar Heels then went on a roll, defeating Boston College and Pitt during a five-game winning streak that brought them bowl eligibility. In the season finale, they lost by two to Duke, giving their fierce rivals the division title.

Two under-achieving teams will meet at Yankee Stadium for the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, as Notre Dame and Rutgers square off this postseason.

Notre Dame started the season with a win over Temple, before losing a tough one at Michigan. The Irish were the only team to beat Michigan State, and joined Wisconsin and Stanford as the only teams to defeat Arizona State. However, the losses to the Wolverines and Pittsburgh (as well as defeats to Oklahoma and Stanford) knocked them out of any hopes at BCS contention.

If you’re either Kansas State or from the Big Ten, you’ve grown accustomed to punching above your weight class in bowl games. Bill Snyder’s Wildcats went 21-3 in the regular season the last two years but encountered superior teams in both the Cotton (a 29-16 loss to Arkansas in 2011) and Fiesta (a 35-17 loss to Oregon in 2012). Meanwhile, the Big Ten’s bowl ties are a bit too good, reeling in the money but creating B1G underdogs more often than not.

It almost feels strange, then, that this bowl feels so ... right. Kansas State and Michigan have the same record and are nearly identical from an advanced-stats perspective. Both offenses hold decent-sized advantages despite inconsistency, and in the end, the only separation is that KSU’s special teams unit is better (this is a Snyder team, after all).

We are all Mean Girls sometimes. Do something cool? You’re one of us! Here, let me take you around to all of the places the cool kids go. Did you see the way [Cool Kid of the Opposite Sex] was looking at you? And prom’s right around the corner! That’s so awesome for you!

The cool kid treatment is addictive. Just ask Louisville and Miami, both of whom beat Florida in a three-game span (Louisville 33, No. 4 Florida 23 in the Sugar Bowl and Miami 21, No. 12 Florida 16 on September 7). Louisville leaped from 22nd before the Sugar Bowl to ninth before the 2013 season began; Miami, meanwhile, went from unranked to 16th. Both teams got as high as seventh in the polls, and one of them (Louisville) was treated as a legitimate national title contender.

When the bowl pairings come out, my father, who will probably watch about four of them, peruses the list, just looking at rankings and records. He knows there are better ways to do it (ahem), but in fairness, it’s not like most websites are showing F/+ rankings next to team names, and he doesn’t care enough to look them up. (He’s what you would call a casual fan, at best.)

On Monday after the bowl pairings were announced, he remarked to me just how different a lot of the records were in bowl games this year; he also mentioned that it probably meant the bowls weren’t going to be very good. I scoffed and tried to tell him how awesome bowls always are, but that didn’t get me very far.

The Hurricanes (ACC, 9-3 SU, 5-7 ATS, 7-5 OU) haven’t won a bowl game since topping the Nevada Wolfpack in the MPC Computers Bowl back in 2007, going 0-3 SU and ATS in three bowl appearances since.

The Louisville Cardinals are 3-1 SU over their last four bowl games, including last year’s upset win over Florida as a 14.5-point underdog in the Sugar Bowl.

It’s got a prime backdrop, custom hats, and a stadium that screams, “Notre Dame and Army in the 1930s” (in name, at least, if not location). And its climate-month combination makes the odds of snow football pretty high. The New Era Pinstripe Bowl has a lot of things going for it in trying to stand out among other bowls. Now it just needs better tie-ins.

The current tie (No. 4 from the ACC vs. No. 7 from the Big 12, or a stand-in) means that, of the eight teams who will soon have played in the Pinstripe Bowl, two entered the game at 8-4, four at 7-5, and two at 6-6. None were ranked. And in the 2013 F/+ rankings, one is among the 40 worst teams in FBS. Starting in 2014, it’ll at least pair two local conferences, in the ACC and Big Ten.

The Cincinnati Bearcats won the Belk Bowl last year and return as underdogs here against the North Carolina Tar Heels for the 2013 edition.

The total has gone OVER in five of Cincinnati’s last seven games overall and in three of North Carolina’s last four. The total has also gone OVER in four out of UNC’s last five bowl games, according to the Belk Bowl betting odds history. And with two top-25 passing attacks on display, this game could end up being a shootout as well. Cincinnati finished with 313.8 yards per game, 15th best in the FBS this year, while UNC’s passing attack finished 23rd in the nation with 286.3 passing yards per game.

Oddsmakers monitored by Odds Shark had the Wildcats as 3.5-point favorites in mid-December, with a total hovering near 55.5. There are a few intriguing OVER trends on the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl betting menu (formerly the Insight Bowl). Eleven of the past 15 editions of this game have played OVER and Michigan has been a reliable OVER bet at 11-2 in their past 13 bowl games.

Michigan started the season on a five-game tear, including a 41-30 victory over then-No. 15 Notre Dame as a 4.5-point home favorite, but the wheels came off from there, with just two SU victories in its final seven games. The Wolverines (Big Ten, 7-5 SU, 7-5 ATS, 6-6 OU) did cover in their final three contests, and the total stayed UNDER in four of their last five games.

Update, Dec. 26: Michigan’s announced true freshman Shane Morris will start at quarterback due to Devin Gardner’s injury.

Michigan will be playing Kansas State in the upcoming Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, but will be without the services of kicker Brendan Gibbons, who did not travel with the team due to family reasons. Head coach Brady Hoke made the announcement Monday.