Southern Miss vs. Louisiana Lafayette, New Orleans Bowl 2016: Golden Eagles win at the Superdome

Both sides are right. Bowls are a cynical money-making exercise, an excuse for ESPN inventory, and an outdated way for all the wrong people to maintain some semblance of control over college football. They’re also happy, bonus football.

We are at both extremes in 2016. We once again had 80 bowl bids to give out and fewer than 80 bowl-eligible teams, a sure sign of bloat and excess. We’re also loaded with perhaps more interesting bowl matchups than we’ve ever seen.

Bowl games are good. There are too many of them. Both things are true.

We’re holding steady at 41 on this year’s schedule, counting the National Championship, and again have multiple 5-7 teams that made it in because we ran out of 6-6 teams (Mississippi State and North Texas this time).

Football games are 60 minutes long.

Motivation is a tricky thing in bowl games. You might be rusty. You might be undergoing a coaching change. You might come out firing, only to find your attention span is not what it was a couple of months ago.

Southern Miss capped its 2016 season by beating Louisiana-Lafayette in the New Orleans Bowl at the Superdome, 28-21, on Saturday and into early Sunday morning. The Golden Eagles finished the year 7-6 and the Ragin’ Cajuns, 6-7.

Southern Miss seized control of the game early on, then gave it up, and then took it back, then won in a pinch. The Eagles grabbed a 14-0 lead less than eight minutes into the game, with back-to-back scoring drives that took a combined six plays and just more than two minutes of clock time. They let UL-Lafayette draw even by about the midway mark of the second quarter, though, and had to claw back ahead.

The New Orleans Bowl will be played Saturday night at the Superdome. As usual, the game has some local flavor to it.

Louisiana-Lafayette will face Southern Miss, so for the sixth year in a row, the game will include a Louisiana team. ULL was here four years in a row before an absence last season, and those four games offered the largest attendance figures of all New Orleans Bowls to date. Organizers surely won’t mind having the Ragin’ Cajuns back in town. ULL has also won all four times, so the Cajuns might not mind either.

All wagers at -110 odds unless otherwise noted. Visit Odds Shark for updated lines throughout each game week.

College football bowl games are a different beast for bettors. Sure, the typical handicapping elements apply. Offense and defense matter. But there are some key elements at play that don’t apply as much during the regular season.

College football’s bowl season is upon us. A full schedule is here.

There are 40 bowl games spread from Dec. 17 to Jan. 2, with the National Championship on Jan. 9. Unless you’re watching on multiple monitors and are really committed, you won’t catch all of them. (If that is your plan, more power to you.)