2014 Quick Lane Bowl results: Rutgers blasts North Carolina

Here are the big numbers from Friday’s bowl wins by NC State, Louisiana Tech, and Rutgers.

So how did the Illini lose by 17 points? Blown opportunities. Illinois created nine scoring opportunities (first downs inside the opponent’s 40), scored two touchdowns, settled for four field goals (missing two), lost a fumble, turned the ball over on downs, and punted once. Points per opportunity: a ghastly 2.0.

No Detroit, no. This is NOT okay. Look, it’s kind of hokey in a charming sort of way that you’d attempt to serve barbecue to a bunch of guys who live and study in North Carolina, but don’t you DARE try to put some unintelligible red crap in a bottle and label it as “NC.”

Before you say “Oh, maybe it’s Western NC sauce” let me stop you.

During his Tuesday press conference, Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood, whose brother works for New York City’s equivalent of a SWAT team, honored the fallen officers with a patch, telling NJ.com he wanted to “support them in whatever way I could.”

The Rutgers campus is located less than an hour southwest of NYC.

The Quick Lane Bowl, back when it was the Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl, used to be a fringe bowl game that held a Big Ten team every few years when the conference had enough teams to fill out their bowl lineup. No longer. The bowl at Ford Field has stepped up its game (a little) and will now host teams from the Big Ten and the ACC.

This year, it’s Big Ten newbie Rutgers and sometimes good, sometimes terrible North Carolina, which has been puzzling to figure out this season. The Scarlet Knights were a surprise this season, going 7-5 in their first year in the Big Ten, while the Tar Heels were all over the map, beating both Georgia Tech and Duke, and getting blown out by East Carolina and NC State.

Boxing Day represents the true beginning of the power conferences’ bowl schedule. Utah was the only power team to play before Christmas; four play among today’s three bowls. Let’s take a look at the key questions for each game.

One of the primary purposes of the stats I create for Football Outsiders is the separation of efficiency and explosiveness. We measure efficiency with Success Rate and the magnitude of the successful plays with IsoPPP. Both the Illinois and Louisiana Tech offenses rank better in IsoPPP than success rate, and both defenses rank better in success rate than IsoPPP.

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 Quick Lane Bowl is one of a few new bowl games on the slate this year, and of all the new ones, it probably has the most appeal to a casual fan, unless you really like the Bahamas. The Detroit Lions have agreed to support and sponsor the game, which is a funny story in itself.

With agreements in place to host teams from the ACC and Big Ten, we should be in for a pretty good time. In the initial year of the new tie-ins, Rutgers will take on North Carolina. It remains to be seen if anyone actually shows up to watch the game -- Detroit isn’t exactly the No. 1 destination for people looking for a post-Christmas vacation -- but nonetheless it is an important football game and some folks will surely make the trip.