Tulsa vs. Central Michigan, Miami Beach Bowl 2016: Golden Hurricane crush Chippewas

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 Bowls are a cynical money-making exercise, an excuse for ESPN inventory, and an outdated way for all the wrong people to maintain some semblance of control over college football.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).

Life in college football’s Group of 5 conferences is one of constant resets. If you succeed, you’re quickly looking for a new coach. If you fail, you’re quickly looking for a new coach.

That is perhaps doubly true for the young coach incubator that is the American Athletic Conference. Of its 12 football teams, eight have replaced their head coaches since last December. UCF, East Carolina, Tulane, and Cincinnati searched for better results; Memphis, Houston, USF, and Temple did because they were too successful.

After a 10-3 first quarter, Tulsa stopped messing around and opened up a 55-10 can of you-know-what all over Central Michigan in the Miami Beach Bowl.

The Golden Hurricane rolled in the stadium built on the land the Miami Hurricanes used to call home, so how’s that for some irony? Most importantly, the game went off without an incident. Not unlike many Miami games back in the old Orange Bowl, if a blowout occurs in South Florida and nobody was around to see it, does it make a sound?

A bowl game kicked off at 2:30 p.m. ET in Miami’s baseball stadium on a Monday. It included 9-3 mid-major Tulsa and 6-6 mid-major Central Michigan, neither of whose campus is anywhere near Miami. Therefore:

This is to be expected, but it’s still pretty impressive to look at all those seats. Folks, it looks like a Marlins game!!!

This year’s Miami Beach Bowl between Tulsa and Central Michigan is the lone bowl game on Monday, Dec. 19 during bowl season. Both teams had two very different paths as to how they got to this bowl.

Let’s start with Tulsa. The Golden Hurricanes opened the season looking like they would contend for the American Athletic Conference title. The team went undefeated in non-conference play other than a loss to Ohio State in Week 2. However close losses to Houston and Navy, which were both decided by a combined nine points, knocked them out of the division race near the end of the season.

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.)

Also, head over here for the fully updated bowl season calendar as it fills in, from the New Orleans Bowl through the Rose Bowl. We’ll also add picks, scores, and more to that calendar over time.

The Miami Beach Bowl returns to college football’s postseason landscape for a third year in 2016. The game started in 2014 and has now gone through two offense-packed years, and it’s back with an American-MAC tie-in match for this year.