NC State vs. Vanderbilt, Independence Bowl 2016: Wolfpack crush Commodores in Shreveport

FPeak SEC occurred in late-October 2014.

When the College Football Playoff committee unveiled its inaugural midseason rankings, the league claimed four of the top six teams in the country: No. 1 Mississippi State, No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Ole Miss, and No. 6 Alabama. At 6-1, No. 11 Georgia was within striking distance of a Playoff bid as well.

Nov. 21, 2016: Tennessee head coach Butch Jones creates the Life Championship and awards it to his own team, which had entered the year as the SEC East favorite and did not win the SEC East.

Also Nov. 21, 2016: Everyone makes fun of the Life Championship.

I use advanced stats whenever possible, but I’m not a zealot. I understand that there is a time and place for most things — kicking 18-yard field goals, punting from the opponent’s 37, etc. — just as there’s a time and place for, say, staying on 12 in Blackjack.

If you’re up six or seven points midway through the fourth quarter, that field goal could put the game away. If you’re down two in the closing seconds, kick that damn ball.

NC State beat Vanderbilt in the Independence Bowl on Monday, 41-17. The win brought the Wolfpack to 7-6 to finish the season, while the Commodores wrapped at 6-7.

It’s an enormous victory for NC State, because it secures the Life Championship Vanderbilt recently took from Tennessee. Vols coach Butch Jones now claims that many teams, not just Tennessee, are so-called Life Champions. But the Wolfpack are now the authentic Life Champs, and so they get this belt, to keep until their next loss:

There are too many bowl games. OK, sure, fine. They still make players happy, mean football on TV, and make enough people money to keep happening.

The day after Christmas 2016 might be the stiffest test yet each of these arguments has faced. Of the six teams scheduled to play on Boxing Day, not one has a winning record.

Vanderbilt and North Carolina State will meet in the Independence Bowl on Monday in Shreveport, La. The two teams got to bowl eligibility by winning an upset in the last week of the regular season: Vanderbilt over Tennessee (to claim both their state and life championships), and NC State over North Carolina (also to claim a state title, in a manner of speaking).

Now they’re here, and the matchup is actually fairly interesting. This could turn out to be a perfectly nice bowl game, even though it’s on the literal worst day of three bowl games in the history of the sport.

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).

College football is like dominoes. One play goes right, and a team finds itself in the Playoff. One goes wrong, and a coach is fired.

With the exception of Alabama, which lapped its conference, this year’s Playoff teams all got there in part because things went just barely right in critical situations. Others missed out because things went just barely wrong, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Elsewhere, surprising twists thrusted legacy programs into course-altering coaching changes. (And plenty of things we thought mattered a lot, like Tennessee’s many September comebacks or Texas’ win over Notre Dame, ultimately didn’t.)

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.)