2016-17 College Football Bowl-a-Rama thread

Yeah, I also noticed this during the live broadcast. My response was "Maybe don't do that to the guy who punched a woman?"

 

Sugar Bowl crowd was the smallest in 78 years:

 

The whole thing is going to collapse someday, probably when the TV contract is up for renewal. If you aren't the Rose Bowl, hosting one of the two semifinals or hosting an in-state team that doesn't come often and has momentum from a good year, the economics don't work at the gate.

 

Ranking all 40 college football bowl games for 2016-17: From worst to best

 

The OU-Auburn game last night had "full sections in the Superdome's upper corners [that] sat empty."

Full sections that sat empty? Okay.

 

To touch on some of the posts upthread:
-- In my view, the Rose Bowl was about two-thirds red. There was about a one-quarter section totally blue/white and some pockets of blue/white elsewhere. The rest was red. (sidebar: There were lots of Penn State fans in town for the Rose Bowl who took advantage of the Flyers playing the Ducks on Sunday evening. Lots of Penn State gear at Honda Center in Anaheim. Yes, I experienced two gut-wrenching games in two days.)
-- I was in the end zone, same section as the Trojan band, about halfway up. It was fine. Tickets were $150. My friend was offered midfield tickets for $300 in the top row. He declined. I'm glad he did. I think the top is Row 70, right around there. For the USC-Texas Rose Bowl, I was in the top row to the left of the press box. Still able to see but a long way away.
-- It was the best game I've ever seen, surpassing Loyola Marymount 149, Michigan 115 in the NCAA Tournament second round in 1990 at the Long Beach Arena.
-- As I've noted previously, when I retired from the newspaper game 2-1/2 years ago, that gave me the right to set aside my objectivity and root for my alma mater, despite what a-holes like JC and "prominent posters" think. There have been lots of times when it has been difficult to be a proud Trojan, but not today.
-- With about 4 minutes to go when USC punted, I was thinking about what I was going to post here regarding the claims by Songbird and me that USC would beat anybody else in the country except Alabama. I was just going to admit to being wrong, but now I don't have to. Songbird and I can stick to our opinions. Longtime and JC and Chef.2 can continue their petty needling, if they want, even though it stopped being funny about 10 minutes after they started it.

 

You're free to think allowing 49 points to what is marginally a top-10 team is evidence of USC's ability to beat down everyone else in college football. Nobody's stopping you, but it's good for mocking.

However, this report is incomplete without details about how many funny-looking yellow people you were able to laugh at.

 

Blown out in the worst bowl of the year! Fire up Chips!

 

To you.

 

By winning, USC earned the coveted "Team that should've been in the playoff and that nobody wanted to play" trophy.

There's one every year. Georgia in 2007 is one that immediately springs to mind, the year they crushed Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. It's the team that has a bad start, loses a couple of games early -- including a key conference game -- and then gets hot down the stretch but can't overcome the bad start to win its conference or get in the national discussion. They end up finishing 9-3 or 10-2, going to a major consolation bowl and winning, and get a lot of buzz. But in the end, they've still got two or three losses. Maybe they could've stayed hot through a full playoff, but bottom line is they didn't earn the opportunity.

 

They won a home game. Penn State wins that coveted trophy, even though it lost the game.

 

Among three-loss teams ...

Michigan beat Penn State by 39 points.
USC beat Penn State by three points.