The Alphabetical: Bowl Edition

Spencer Hall offers a letter-by-letter analysis of the college football bowl season.

A is for Ambiguity, Again, ARRRRGGGHH. If the BCS is not dead yet, it has been placed on a metal table, strapped down, and placed in the path of a slowly progressing laser.

No, BCS. I expect you to die! Sadly, no actual laser is available for those responsible for this, or for Thom Brennaman being assigned to cover the biggest games in college football. What we do have, though, is compelling evidence against the BCS’s legitimacy in yet another variation. The twin lynchpins holding this year’s entirely convincing argument against the BCS in place: Utah’s shockingly easy win over Alabama and USC’s dismissal of Penn State.

B is for Boldface. Utah one-upped the 2005 Utes’ BCS run by beating a team most considered to be a heavyweight sure to roll the tiny, helpless Mountain West team in a lopsided Sugar Bowl. In 2005, the Utes’ undefeated run could be contested by their key victory coming over an anemic Pitt team that all but fell facefirst into a BCS bid; this time, they out muscled and outsmarted an Alabama team whose only previous loss came to the eventual BCS champion.

Utah’s last undefeated season was written in 12 point italics; this one deserves 32 point boldface.

C is for Crushing. USC tacked down their end of the argument by annihilating Penn State, who played well blah blah blah, but still gave up 400-plus passing yards to Mark Sanchez and suffered pains at the hands of a clearly enraged USC defense, a collection of physical freaks so conspicuously talented one might think that when they played football, a top secret government lab filled with man sized cages lay empty somewhere in the wilds of America. USC lost to Oregon State; Florida lost to Ole Miss.

Take out the SEC mystique and the additional digit of a title game, and the two teams occupy similar footing distinguishable only in the fuzzy estimates of the polls.

D is for Delayed, but Here. USC was most helped though by those who had failed them so badly during the season: their Pac-10 brethren, who went 5-0 overall in bowl season to bolster the Earthquake Conference's reputation after a rough 2008 season overall.

The Oregon State team who died at Penn State won their bowl game over Pitt, albeit in the ugliest fashion imaginable. Oregon gave the Bas Rutten liver-shot to Oklahoma State; Cal sat back and watched as Miami took the gun in their hands and confidently discharged it into their own foot in the Emerald Bowl. Even Arizona managed to wrest control of the Las Vegas bowl from BYU, who prior to that was thinking about just buying some real estate next to the place to save money come bowl time each year.

E is for Ergo. Or therefore, as in: therefore, those who said the Big 12 played no defense outside of Texas and Oklahoma may coat themselves in buckets of right points. (See R, “Right Points.”) Texas Tech and Oklahoma State were especially polite, giving up 47 and 42 points to Ole Miss and Oregon. The bubble that was the Big 12 South popped loudest with Missouri, who needed overtime to beat Northwestern. No judgment here is definitive--Kansas thrashed Minnesota, and Nebraska balled one out against Clemson in the Gator Bowl--but an argument that the Big 12 suffers a Vitamin D deficiency of some degree certainly seems tenable after this bowl season.

F is for Featured: Hurt the wretched cartel of the BCS all you like. (Really, here’s a taser. Go corner it and hit it with this. I’ve got more batteries when you need them.) Do not argue one point, though: the sprawling bowl season gives ample time to see players you may not have seen enough of during the season. Like Cal running back Jahvid Best, for example, the only human being on the planet capable of hitting the rewind button on life in the middle of a run:

G is for Gutted. It has taken me two days to figure out precisely what brought Florida/Oklahoma to the tipping point in Florida's favor, and after much careful consideration and an IV of coffee, it comes to this: Florida’s secondary, not Tim Tebow, saved the game for Florida.

Wright’s assassination of Manuel Johnson set the tone, and when Florida’s line failed to mount consistent pressure on Bradford, the Gators compensated by meeting the ball at the point of attack not at the line, but at the moment the ball hit the receiver. Texas beat OU by destabilizing their pass protection and clamping down on the run.

Florida took a slightly different tack: they mitigated the run and contested the passing game as no other team did, and did so with a secondary that spent most of 2007 applying ointment to their numerous burns. When you attack the “weakest” link in the Gator secondary on the opening drive, and he responds by committing second-degree assault on your wide receiver...you knew then that this would be a very, very different game for Oklahoma.

H is for Heroic. On the flipside, consider the minor miracle performed by Oklahoma’s defense against Florida, another storyline drowned out by Thom Brennaman’s erotic paeans to Tim Tebow. (He and Bill Plaschke are currently in a van outside his house with listening devices and powerful telephoto lenses. Call the police.) OU bluffed Tebow into two picks in the first half and limited Florida to 24 points, a measly total Oklahoma’s unstoppable offense easily matched. Um, I mean, didn’t.

I is for Insidious. Hey, it’s not just an equipment box--IT’S A RAMBOX!!! You can put guns and fishing poles ‘n stuff in it, and most definitely not anything like groceries or anything your wife would like, ‘cause it’s a man’s truck for man things. You know, just like you, since you spend all your time hauling thousand-pound flats of bricks around in between fishing expeditions and barfights. The Dodge Ram commercials piped directly down the unwilling throat of the viewer every other minute during the BCS games on Fox may be the most compelling reason to oppose a buyout of US automakers I can think of. I don’t know why, but it just is. RAMBOX!!!

J is for Jeremiah. Masoli, who Jesse Palmer described as having “fat ankles, but not in a bad way.” Fat ankles bring the pain, son.

Jesse Palmer, by the way, was another one of bowl season’s pleasant discoveries: frank, informal, and often incisive once you get past his “YAH DOOD” delivery. He’s also boundlessly enthusiastic and will let out a quality “WOO” with Craig James every now and then, a bit of yahoo behavior I support in every way.

K is for Kippered. Take a fish, split it, salt it, and then smoke it: congrats, you have just kippered a fish, or done pretty much what LSU did to Georgia Tech in the Peach Bowl. If you wonder how a Georgia Tech team that ground up Miami for 400 yards was stymied by LSU, please see Ricky Jean-Francois, who appeared to be playing two tackle spots at once in Atlanta. Stop the dive, and you make stopping the triple option a much simpler affair than it could be. RJF played the part of riot barrier most of the night, and Jonathan Dwyer played the part of car running directly into it.

L is for Lassitude. There must be better bars in Orlando than I realized, as Georgia appeared to be shaking off the 2 a.m. round of adult beverages for the first half of the Capital One Bowl against Michigan State. They rebounded nicely enough, but Michigan State helped by putting the game in the hands of Brian Hoyer. The bold thinking earns points for innovation, and loses massive sums for its actual effects, as the Spartans only tallied 12 points against an oft-porous 2008 Georgia defense. The game summed up the year nicely for Georgia: a victory overall, yes, but filled with inexplicable sleepy spells and an overall lassitude only half-explained by injuries.

M is for Morose. If you are attempting to spy the career crisis light switching into overdrive for any coach this bowl season, you likely drifted to one of two suspects--Bob Stoops or Jim Tressel. Neither seems to be in even remote danger over their postseason failures, but consider one thing: while Stoops’ record is worse overall in BCS games, the pressure at Ohio State may be more intense and less forgiving, especially given the impending threat of what Michigan might become over the next three or four years. Should Michigan become competitive against the Buckeyes again, Tressel may be in more immediate danger than previously thought...especially with the Wolverines singlehandedly attempting to drag the Big Ten into the 21st century.

N is for Now for Something Completely Different. The Big Ten went 1-5 and fell through your screen door while trying to walk into the house, but then tried to fix it, thus tearing the door off the hinges and requiring the expensive work of a real repairman. You then said it was fine, and then suggested they just have a glass of wine and relax, which they did, but then spilled that glass of Shiraz all over your white berber carpet ... which is when you told them to just go home before you chased them out of the house with a butcher knife.

You know what a cure is for any conference’s ailments, though? Facing the Spurrierbot in a bowl game. This is particularly true when Stephen Garcia looks like 2002 tape of Kurt Warner, fumbling once and throwing three interceptions to allow Iowa to throttle the Gamecocks 31-10, and providing further support for our theory that Steve Spurrier died in a plane crash in 2001 and has been played by a robot stand-in ever since. (Hence the name: Spurrierbot.)

The only good thing that came of this for Carolina fans? John Buccigross’s line on Sportscenter: “South Carolina, rockin’ with their mascot out.” One hundred cocktails to you, sir.

O is for Overexcited. The quick-snap on Oklahoma’s fourth down attempt at the goal line in the second quarter against Florida baffled the mind. With all the time in the world and after already getting stuffed on a third down run, Oklahoma lined up and rushed into a power run play...which was then easily snuffed out by Torrey Davis.

Watching replays, it appeared the mammoth Sooner line was not even set for the play. Had they waited, they could have gotten the same leverage they had gotten on Florida for much of the game. As it played out, Davis knifed in and killed another OU scoring opportunity.

P is for Pele. The Hawaiian fire goddess, who must have been properly appeased prior to kickoff by the Notre Dame officials visiting from the mainland. Jimmy Clausen threw for 401 yards and 5 TDs in a 49-21 win over Hawaii--most of those bombs to Golden Tate, sure, but when you’re trying to snap a bowl losing streak dating back to 1993, you ride that pony ‘till the hooves fall off if you have to, really.

Q is for Quan. (Again.) The Agony Kings of the BCS this season must be the Ohio State Buckeyes; we will brook no competition. Having played the team that should have by all rights been in the national title game--Texas--to the last dregs of the fourth quarter and leading by four...you had no idea what cruelty lay in store for you, especially as you’d kept Texas’ chickenpeck short-passing game in check for so much of the night. (Many completions, but only 17 points.)

Then Quan Cosby and McCoy saw one little hole, and that was all they needed to rip a hole in the whole facade of impending victory.

At least the Rose Bowl was over by the first half, and the national title game had Florida clearly grabbing momentum in the second from Oklahoma. This was a Rochambeau directly to the Buckeyes, um...buckeyes. If they’d laid down on the ground and just had a good, wailing, fist-pounding cry, I wouldn’t have judged them for it.

R is for Right Points. Most helpful in the context of a marriage or long-term relationship, Right Points allow you to quantify the number of times you are right or wrong. If you thought Ohio State would actually use Todd Boeckman in the bowl game for anything besides holding down a bench, award yourself right points. If you thought he would play as well as he did, you are a filthy liar, and need to stop playing this game immediately.

S is for Surgery. More like the surgery Dexter performs on his victims, and less like the kind that heals: that is what the Utah offense did to Alabama’s defense in the Sugar Bowl. It is entirely possible that Alabama peaked early against Georgia and Clemson and then just rode the rest of the schedule downhill, but Utah made them look like a team that, for all the talk of the Nick Saban “process,” is far from a finished product.

The Utes dominated Alabama at every position despite being outweighed in sheer poundage and in the megatons of hype laid on them pre-game. John Parker Wilson was sacked eight times. Utes receivers caught pinpoint passes in tight coverage thanks to outhustling and outmuscling Bama’s secondary at the point of attack. The Utes’ defense allowed 31 yards total rushing to a team accustomed to paving opponents with casual brutality in the ground game.

They played, in other words, as Alabama had all season long, but with the benefit of an effective quarterback.

T is for Titanic. Colorado State RB Gartrell Johnson’s line against Fresno State: 27 carries for 285 yards and 2 TDs, and 5 receptions for 90 yards. Horrifyingly awesome work in New Mexico Bowl and a final nail in the coffin of Fresno State’s third consecutive fail at grabbing the ring of “BCS Buster [insert year here.]”

U is for Universally Understood. Do not bet against Howard Schnellenberger in football, poker, fashion, or arm-wrestling matches against sailors. You will lose every time, as I did in picking Central Michigan over FAU in the Motor City Bowl. I have learned my lesson, and will purchase a pair of seersucker pants, a pink sportcoat, and suspenders as a simultaneous tribute and apology to the Dapper Don.

V is for Vaya Con Dios. Pat White got a proper goodbye in defeating UNC 31-30 in a game seemingly designed as an NFL audition for the scrambling QB. White threw for 332 yards on 26/32 passing, and did so in front of a solid contingent of properly worshipful WVU fans in Charlotte in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. A proper tribute to the slipperiest quarterback to ever play college football without a dogfighting problem. Let’s not talk about next year for the ‘Eers LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU [fingers in ears.]

W is for Winners: Rutgers, for finishing off an astonishing recovery from near-death for 2008 by beating resurgent NC State 29-23 in the PapaJohns.com Bowl; Kentucky, for ekeing out a winning record and bowl win in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year; Vanderbilt, whose first bowl win in 53 years came in the Music City Bowl; for Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson, who successfully avoided the urge to kill themselves during the stultifying Brut Sun Bowl between Oregon State and Pitt; and to Virginia Tech, who somehow made a BCS bowl and won despite lacking an offense for the sixth year in a row. Frank Beamer is a sorcerer, y’all, a veritable Voldemort of the punt block.

X is for XO. Only the finest VSOP goes to: Ole Miss, who wins a piece of the Transitive Property National Championship by beating Texas Tech, who also beat Texas, who beat Oklahoma, who lost to Texas, who lost to Texas Tech. Take their outright win over Florida into account, and Ole Miss clearly has an iron grip on the TPNC.

Y is for Yearly Promise. Raise your hand with me: I will not overestimate the effect of these bowl victories, as each team will shed a class of extremely important seniors, and thus lose valuable experience. I will also not simply take the final top ten from this year and replug them blindly without evaluating who they lose, who they gain, and where they will be playing said games.

You’ll probably do this anyway, but like New Year’s Resolutions, they’re fun to make.

Z is for Zai yi zi. Or Chinese for again: if Tim Tebow is indeed back for his senior year, your number one slot just got a bit easier to fill, didn’t it? Thom Brennaman, the restraining order is being filed against you as we type.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.