Bowl Season Recap

Ok, to say that it's been too long since I've written a blog post is an understatement. We here at Onions! encountered a bit of erratic behavior at the conclusion of 2010 and posts went the way of the dinosaur. Never fear 2011 is a new year (new decade even) and like the 9-8 Miami Heat, we're gonna right the ship. Before you know it, we'll be the hottest team in the league and people will feel stupid that they ever questioned how good we could be. But, I digress, it's time to give the people what they came for. I present, the first Onions! post of 2011!

Lately, when it came to writing blog posts, I needed a little help staying in the game and turned to a trusty friend. No, not Levitra, college football. I can write about college football until my face turns blue (it is now) and I figured a bowl season recap was in order. No, we're not going through all 998,239 bowls that were played this holiday season, we're going to recap some of the games that I think mattered.

The Tostitos BCS National Championship Game

#1.  Auburn 22 –  #2. Oregon 19

This year’s BCS championship between the undisputed #1 and #2 teams in the country (Texas Christian fans can go f**k themselves if they think that TCU was better than either one of these teams) was supposed to be akin to an old-school gunfight at the O.K. Corral. There were supposed to be points early and often, in fact,  many experts projected the actual final score to be surpassed in the 2^nd or 3^rd quarter. Instead, the Auburn and Oregon defenses really showed up and dictated play to the offenses much more than expected (note: a 5 week layoff between the final regular season game/conference championship game and the National Championship Game is entirely too long. There is nothing like this in all of sports. The NFL has one week off before the Super Bowl, the NBA doesn’t have any artificially scheduled time between the conference finals and the NBA finals, the NHL…wait, I have NO CLUE (nor do I remotely care) what the NHL does between the conference finals and the Stanley Cup finals. The side of the ball most disadvantaged by these long layoffs is undeniably the offense. Offensive timing, crispness, and play-calling rhythm were noticeably absent for long stretches of this championship game and past championship games as well).  

This year was also the first in my memory where I didn’t actively root for one team to lose/win, I was captivated by two story lines: Auburn’s Cameron Newton’s controversy plagued Heisman Trophy season and trendy Oregon (seriously, their Nike uniforms are works of ART) trying to win its first national championship. Oregon’s play calling was everything Herm Edwards would’ve hoped for and more. Without a doubt, Oregon PLAYED TO WIN THE GAME! Oregon ran a reverse on a kick-off (and a fake reverse), a successful fake punt, and numerous misdirection plays that illustrated Oregon coach Chip Kelly’s desire to leave no stone unturned in the playbook. I would not have been upset with an Oregon victory though I felt that Auburn was the superior team (despite Auburn’s hyper-conservative play calling. Henry Kissinger, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity all thought the Auburn play-calling was disgustingly conservative…)

Onions! Bowl of the Year

Little Caesar’s Bowl

Florida International University 34 – Toledo 32

Props to Oregon who played to win the game (See Herm Edwards link above) but Auburn’s conservative play calling did not allow the National Championship Game to qualify for the Onions! Bowl of the Year. Instead, that honor goes to the Little Caesar’s Bowl (pizza pizza?) played in Detroit, Michigan and featuring Toledo and Florida International. These teams don’t come from AQ conferences (quick note: AQ stands for Automatic Qualifying or BCS conferences. It’s a just another jargon-y way that college football elites have created to elevate themselves above the masses.) but they held their own in the mid-major MAC and Sun Belt conference with Toledo going 7-1 in the MAC and Florida International going 6-2 in the Sun Belt. Now, normally, I would rail against the proliferation of bowls (rant begin) that allows a 7-6 team (Florida International) to play in a bowl. I mean, we’re rewarding people for winning 54% of their games. When’s the last time you were rewarded for finishing 54% of anything in life? Never? That’s what I thought (rant end). But the respectable conference records (even in conferences that don’t blow your socks off) of each team allowed me to tune in initially and the post-Christmas fireworks that followed in the game kept me on ESPN (it also doesn’t hurt that there is NOTHING else on tv the day after Christmas).

This game started out ordinarily enough. Toledo built a 24-7 lead early in the 3^rd Quarter and looked to be running away with the game. But then, Florida International’s T.Y. Hilton returned a kickoff 89 yards to the house after Toledo’s field goal and made the score 24-14. FIU then had a solid defensive possession and pulled within a field goal on their ensuing possession after T.Y. Hilton caught a 10 yd TD pass. Before I knew it, there were 3 minutes left in the 4^th Quarter and FIU held a 31 to 24 edge. Toledo responded with an amazing 2 minute TD drive and 2 point conversion to regain the lead 32 to 31 with 1:14 seconds left, but the drama in this game was far from over.

Toledo looked to have the game sealed following a 2^nd down sack and 3^rd down incompletion by FIU. FIU was facing a 4^th and 17 with 41 seconds remaining and resorted to one of my favorite football plays of all-time, the hook-and-lateral (video demonstration). The play was successful for 17 yards and a few inches and gave FIU new life with a fresh set of downs. A big pass and a couple of runs later and FIU had set up a 34 yard field goal to win the game. Jack Griffin’s 34 yard field goal sealed an improbable win for FIU, a team that went from down 21 to up 8 and down 1 with less than a minute left. Great game by FIU and Toledo, I watch so many sporting events where I want both teams to lose because of their awful style of play. It’s very rare that I watch a game where I wish that both teams could have walked away winners.