Nebraska caps disappointing season with win vs. UCLA in Foster Farms Bowl

Behold, the least amount of field rushing you can do while still drawing the ire of security:

This is a Nebraska fan at the Foster Farms Bowl at Levi’s Stadium, and this is the extent of his transgression:

Honestly, a 6-6 cutoff for a bowl is pretty arbitrary. Going by F/+ ratings, your average 5-7 power-conference team is midway between your average 7-5 or 8-4 mid-major. The only reason we cut things off at 6-6 is to make ourselves feel better about not sending a team with a losing record to a bowl.

We learned this year that having 40 bowls is a tipping point. While there were plenty of scenarios that could make for 80 bowl-eligible teams, three 5-7 teams -- Nebraska, San Jose State, and Minnesota -- got postseason bids.

Nebraska certainly wasn’t hoping for a 5-7 season to start the year. But after sneaking into a bowl game despite their losing record thanks to an emergency NCAA rule to fill bowl season, the Huskers redeemed a bit of their season against UCLA in the Foster Farms Bowl, beating the Bruins, 37-29.

The Huskers were able to go bowling at 5-7 thanks to the high Academic Progress Rate scores of previous Nebraska teams.

Nebraska safety Nate Gerry was ejected for targeting for the second straight game, this time on a very controversial call in the waning seconds of the first half of the Foster Farms Bowl against UCLA. Here’s the hit:

Nebraska coach Mike Riley was extremely upset with the call:

Two traditional football powers will meet in the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl, and Nebraska would probably prefer that you just leave it at that rather than delve into their latest season.

The Cornhuskers were the only team to beat No. 3 Michigan State this fall, but they only won four other games before the NCAA gave them special consideration as a bowl eligible 5-7 team. That included a loss to 2-10 Purdue that spawned righteous levels of indignation the blackshirt faithful had never known before. Despite a season filled with more downs than ups, they were still able to sneak into a bowl matchup against a UCLA team that spent much of 2015 rattling around the top 25 rankings.

The statistical concept of second-order wins involves taking the stats from a game and deriving that you would have won that game X percent of the time, based on the game’s stats.

Then, it’s adding up those second-order win expectations over the course of the season.

_{Confused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.}

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There were a few names for the Foster Farms Bowl before it settled on a new title sponsor in 2014 and a new home where for 2015.

Founded as the San Francisco Bowl in 2002, the game was originally played at AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. After a stint as the Emerald Bowl, it became the Kraft Fight Hunger in 2010 and eventually became the Foster Farms Bowl in 2014, its first year at Levi’s Stadium, the new home of the San Francisco 49ers.