A is for Asymmetrical. The combined score of the games held on the inaugural weekend of the college bowl season: 140-52, with the losing teams falling by an average total of 29.3 points per game. For further commentary, here’s Bill Hancock, BCS Spokesperson and Rhetorical Wizard.
The Vowelabetical: College Football Bowl Season’s First And Boringest Weekend
The first weekend of bowl games barely merited five letters of content, much less a full Alphabetical, but the Vowelabetical gives three blowouts and one epic beard more than the attention the New Mexico, Humanitarian, and New Orleans bowl ever deserved.
Hey guys! Just lurking over here trying to keep a low profile so you’ll keep your eye on all that hot action the bowl system’s cranking out. Most definitely not peeking in Mark Cuban’s windows, attempting to catch him in delicto flagrante with someone other than his wife in order to blackmail him into starting a competitive college football playoff. Why would we do that, especially when I technically don’t exist? (I don’t even have a whole picture to myself!)
Did you see UTEP try hard! It’s that kind of effort that makes the bowl games so special for the players. Some of those UTEP players had never seen a Mormon up close, much less tackled one. I’m sorry, that should read “attempted to tackle.”
The guys from BYU were plenty excited, too!
See, it’s just that kind of spontaneity you can’t get with a playoff. You think you can just plan pulling over on the side of a road, picking up a drifter, and then letting the night take you where it may? Certainly not. It’s an organic thing, something just as natural and free-flowing as watching Ohio University fall behind by ten points and realize that with Frank Solich’s offense they are completely out of the game in the second quarter.
We at the BCS didn’t do any of this, but let’s not let it stop us from taking credit for the outstanding competition you got to watch this weekend. You’re welcome, and let’s hope there’s more of this intense competition to come! Who knows? You might even see teams win pottery! YES THAT’S RIGHT---
--WE SAID POTTERY. If that’s not America in a single image, we don’t know what is.
Thank you, Bill. Enlightening as always, and delightfully counterfactual because every single one of these games were utter crap.
E is for Emersal. “Floating towards the surface of water,” or tracking the long trip upward for BYU over the course of 2010. Sometimes all you have to do to find out what’s wrong with your team is lose four in a row including a game to Utah State who you never, ever lose to, fire your defensive coordinator, have your head coach take over defensive playcalling, and then finish the season at 7-6 by blowing out a UTEP team bound and determined to give one team on the field a winning mark on the season. That team was BYU and they helped by committing some of the stupidest personal fouls and eschewing the messy, potentially injurious business of tackling altogether, but let’s not short them of their dues. They were determined to get a victory for someone out there, and that someone just happened to be BYU.
BYU's future looks nasty enough for potential opponents without UTEP's help, though. Jake Heaps was scarily accurate (73% on the day), the run game rolled for 219 yards, and the BYU defensive line got pressure on poor, ankle-less Trevor Vittatoe without bringing extra blitzers. All in all, a superb recovery by the Cougars on the year, and as good an ending to the season as one could reasonably demand from what was a disaster on October 1st.
I is for Intolerable. Ohio University under Frank Solich has a serious problem with their offense, and it's this: if they get behind by ten points, they're done. The bizarre recourse for the Bobcats after they fell behind to a clearly angry Troy Trojans team in the New Orleans Bowl was to turn Boo Jackson, not the most accomplished passer in the world, loose in the passing game. This was like saying "I now give up on putting out this forest fire with this broken hose, and will instead pee on it until it is extinguished." it worked about as well as that strategy, too.
In response, Troy defended the honor of the Sun Belt by throwing up 602 yards of offense on Ohio in what was perhaps the most unwatchable of the three blowouts on the day.
O is for Obsolete, and Still Effective. Gary Danielson has been singing of the death of the spread option for at least three years now, and if he was watching the Humanitarian Bowl he would have told you that it was still dead, but that whatever Northern Illinois was doing to Fresno State was a zombie version of the spread. The only way to kill a zombie is to aim for the head, and Pat Hill was without a blunt object or firearm on Saturday in Boise.
To their credit, Northern Illinois at least had the kid of blowout as random stranger could enjoy watching. QB Chandler Harnish ran a brilliantly executed pass game, contributed 72 yards in the running game, and offered the viewer the only thing they could ask for in a blowout bowl game: something well-done to behold in the process of watching overwhelming force applied to an overmatched object.
U is for Unkillable. I’m not going to be the guinea pig for this theory, but on a weekend of mediocre football one discovery was made: grow a beard like Troy’s punter Will Goggans, and you may become immortal and bulletproof.
Troy could have scored by simply snapping the ball to Goggans on a punt and watching as he walked confidently into the endzone with Ohio’s players staring terrified at his bearded visage. Goggans grew the beard after his father kicked him out of Asgard, and will keep it until his final battle with the mischievous but malevolent Loki.
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