Cue the sad trombone. Cue sad Urban Meyer eating pizza in a golf cart.
What a dud. When the best of the four games was Alabama only beating Washington 24-7, there certainly is no reason to expand the four team playoff. The playoffs, after three years, has given us one good game - Ohio State's win over Alabama in the first year. The other five have proved useless with the better team trouncing the other.
-Citrus Bowl - I watched most of this game and felt bad for Heisman trophy winner Lamar Jackson, who spent most of the day running for his life. Hard to believe this was the same Cardinals team that destroyed Florida State back in September. LSU looked like the team they were supposed to be at the start of the season. 29-9 and the Tigers look like the third best team right now, and without Leonard Fournette.
Down 26-6 late in the game, Louisville coach Bobby Petrino chose to kick another field goal instead of giving Jackson a chance. Typical gutless coaching move by America's most despicable coach.
-Taxslayer Bowl - didn't watch. Actually, I flipped over for a moment, saw Kentucky getting run by Georgia Tech and went back to see if Louisville could mount a comeback. Bring back the Gator Bowl please.
-Peach Bowl - hard to believe this was the best game of the day. Washington even scored first! There was hope! The Huskies had to do ONE thing to stay in this game with Alabama, don't turn the ball over. A fumble and a pick six in the first half was all Alabama needed. If a team wants to beat Bama, it has to avoid turnovers at all costs. You couldn't blame Washington's defense, they gave up two touchdowns after being on the field most of the game.
At least this game gave us the season's second booger eating incident.
If you missed the first one, it was Jim Harbaugh during a game which he subsequently spent days denying. This is Steve Sarkisian, the incoming Alabama offensive coordinator.
-Fiesta Bowl - Ohio State fans now know how Michigan State fans felt last year.
Look, it's the amount of points the Buckeyes scored.
Could we now stop the call for expanding the playoffs? The two best teams won and will play for the title, just like they did last year. What could be the reason for adding more teams to the mix? Yeah, Penn State fan says the Lions won the Big 10, they should have been in. Maybe, but does anyone think the outcome would have been any different? More teams would just water down an already watered down bloated bowl schedule.
After the games we flipped back and forth between the New Years Eve programming on the major networks and CNN. Hard to believe but Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper goofing off was the best of the bunch. There is no "rock" on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve but it did have a complete Mariah Carey meltdown, which may have been the most appropriate way to say goodbye to 2016.
Fox had Pitbull's New Years Revolution which included all of two minutes of Pitbull. The man's name is on the 90 minute show and he was on for a midnight countdown and one song. There was plenty of Queen Latifah mangling live read sponsorships, Snoop Dogg doing whatever Snoop does and a half dozen gravel voiced old rappers from the I Love the 90's tour. Young MC was wearing jogging pants and a sweater two sizes too small.
So, no games today as the NFL wraps up the regular season and we may not be able to watch the one worthwhile game, the Lions and Packers, as our local NBC affiliate is now blacked out on DirecTV in a carriage rights dispute.
Monday, the final four games of the the bowl season. At least the Big 10 will get three more shots at respectability with Wisconsin, Iowa and Penn State playing. The alleged "best conference" is 2-5 in bowl games so far.
Happy New Year.
