Sometimes life just writes its own lame jokes…like when BYU gets a coach named “Bronco” and then plays its first bowl game under him in Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada. It helps that their opponent is Cal-Berkeley, a school known for its sterling academic reputation, improving football program, and status as the campus that produced “Naked Man,” a student who petitioned for the right to attend class in the nude. (A compromise was reached by asking NM to wear a loincloth, which he agreed to don on cold days.)

Name: The Pioneer PureVision Las Vegas Bowl

Motto: “Clumsily named, but still in the only place where you could conceivably place a teaser on the game while receiving oral sex from a hooker legally all in the comfort of your Bunny Ranch suite.” That’s not the actual motto, of course, there isn’t one on their site, at least. But that’s what it should be, dammit.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Pioneer PureVision. We don’t even know what this product is, nor will we validate their hamhanded sponsorship by finding out. We’re guessing it’s something visual and electronic, but it could be contact solution or binoculars for donkeys, for all we care. A bulkier corporate tag hasn’t been hung around the neck of a spindly, pre-New Year’s bowl game since the “Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl” crashed onto the scene in the mid-nineties.

Tradition rating: A redwood among saplings compared to the GMAC and New Orleans Bowl, the Las Vegas Bowl stretches all the way back to the dark ages of the first Bush administration and Pearl Jam. The firste contefte tooke placeth in thine owne yeare of 19 and 92, whenne lordes did leape to the dulcet toness of such luminaries as the brethren Mack Daddy and the righte Daddy Mack. Forthewith, we dubbe the treditione rating off the Las Vegas bowl as: Kriss Kross

Tradition rating: Kriss Kross.

Location. Las Vegas. (Casual, buddy-buddy sportswriter rule infraction: Not typing word “baby” after “Las Vegas” and not simply shortening town to “Vegas.” Fine to be assessed later.) We’re one of five people on the planet who hate Las Vegas, but for bowl distractions even we have to concede that Vegas wears the sooty crown, a bone-dry aquarium of lust, compulsion, b-list musicians taking fat checks for regular work, neon, and a meth-crazed local workforce devoted to pouring weak drinks down your throat and kicking hookers out of your room 24 hours a day. (more…)

This is my favorite time of the year.

Not because of Christmas or any of that bollocks, but because the Bowl games are here-and they always bring us some great matchups, and lots of betting value if you know where to look.

So, in honor of the bowl season, I bring you some great gambling memories from bowl seasons past.

(I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, because I’ve taken plenty of hits betting on bowl games. As a matter of fact, the first big gambling loss during my betting career was in the 1987 Gator Bowl, where I had South Carolina -3.5 against LSU, and LSU beat my ass 30-13. Truth be told, I could probably write a much longer column on the hits I’ve taken-damn, I get depressed just thinking about some of them.)

Here are the best winners, in chronological order, with the backstories that made each of them great:

1992 Rose Bowl (Azusa, CA)
Washington (-6.5) 34, Michigan 14
To this day, 1991 Washington remains the best CFB team I have ever seen-only 1995 Nebraska comes close. For those who don’t remember, the 1991-1992 bowl season had a lot of interesting matchups, and #2 Washington playing #4 Michigan was the pick of the litter-or, at least, it was until the games started.

The win was made all the sweeter by a prediction from a good friend of mine, Gay F. During a conversation between me and my friend Lex regarding whether Steve Emtman was the greatest defensive player ever or just right then, Gay F decided to chime in with “(Michigan 1st team AA OL Greg) Skrepenak is going to dominate Emtman.” Uuuhhh…no. I mean, shit man, that was HeismanPundit Boise-Georgia wrong.

The definitive sequence in this game was just before halftime. Washington had controlled the game, but only held a 13-7 lead. Billy Joe Hobert threw an interception and Michigan had the ball at the Washington 30 with about 1:30 to play in the half. What happened next?

1st down: Steve Emtman sacked Grbac for a loss of 11 yards.
2nd down: Andy Mason and Steve Emtman sacked Grbac for a loss of 3 yards.
3rd down: an inside handoff to Wheatley who runs wide right; Chico Fraley and Tommie Smith tackled him for a loss of 1 yard.

So good God had to strike him down to save the universe from certain sackdom.

And, for all intents and purposes, that was the game. Perhaps the greatest thing about this sequence was that after the sack on 2nd down, the ABC cameras caught Michigan HC Moeller on the sidelines, and the look on his face was the biggest WTF? look that you’ll ever see.

One of the football scars from the past that I still carry is the fact that this Washington team had to share the title with Miami. (more…)

P.J. Daniels both earns our respect and provides a superb example of how to flex P.R. muscle in this excerpt from Mark Bradley’s piece in today’s AJC :

During a media gathering Wednesday, publicist Mike Stamus — acting as the interviewer in Tech’s satellite feed package — asked tailback P.J. Daniels what he thought when he learned the Jackets were bound for the Emerald Bowl.

Said Daniels: “We got screwed.”

Said Stamus, turning to his cameraman: “We won’t use that part.”

Good decision, Mike.

P.S. This comes from the AJC’s “Blogs” section, which is just the print column posted under a banner that says “blogs”-which makes it a blog! We’ll be wearing a shirt that says “RICH, AND MIND-BOGGLINGLY HUNG” in hopes of performing the same feat the AJC’s accomplished here.

Bruce Gradkowski went apeshit for the Toledo Rockets in the GMAC Bowl, throwing five touchdowns in a 45-13 smiting of the UTEP Miners. As predicted, the broadcast featured many shots of the U.S.S. Alabama, including a pregame teaser featuring Holly Rowe standing next to the battleship-prompt your own Carnie Wilson standing next to Grand Canyon in the “Hold On” video joke here, since we know they’re coming. Let us also head everyone off at the pass by saying that in the Consequence-free Arena of Potential Sex™ (CAPS), we’re betting Holly could slam pink parts with gusto, which explains our growing crush on the spunky, chunky sideliner despite her bedeviled hair. (Holly seems to get the worst draw on the weather/hair care product matchups. Perhaps she should go the Leslie Visser route and wear silly hats? )

Our reader Devil Grad sums up the Toledo victory better than we can:

When Mike Price said “it’s rollin’ baby!,” I don’t what he had in mind was Tom Amstutz coming across the field for the post-game handshake.

Heck, I’m a MAC fan, and I ditched that game to go finish up my Christmas shopping.

Our sentiments exactly. And now, a picture of Tom Anstutz and friend: rollin’, baby.

Rollin’.

Who knew Mormons could be…ironic…and simultaneously funny?

Not so dum, dum dum dum dum here. HT:Cougar Board and reader Osvaldo Mandias.

Sentiment-for the weak! We follow the Martian law of Commisar Murphy, who commands us to dispense with emotion and see things for what they are: a neverending series of sham operas wrapped in Potemkin villages of treacly emotion designed to fool you, the hardworking, noble football proletariat, into thinking you are truly free men dwelling beneath the benevolent hand of your capitalist masters!!! Down with their lies! And their (sound of spitting on ground) bowl system!

Are you ready for some revolution?

Thus our disdain for Joe Paterno’s getting awarded the AP’s coach of the year award , who somehow landed the coach of the year award despite being the man responsible for Penn State’s five year slide in the first place. In a year packed with qualified sleep-deprived candidates, the clear-headed thinkers of the AP voted in the old man for one last go ’round instead of rewarding any of the following guys for their phenomenal jobs in the face of past failure, adversity, and in one case, natural disaster:

1. George O’Leary. Went from skanky winless mid-major to eight wins and bowling. Superb work, which will be written up on his resume as ten wins and a Fiesta Bowl berth.

2. Steve Spurrier. Yes, he’s at the top of the site, but after an offseason that had the Vols nervously fidgeting their “C.O.P.S.” Campus Ruckus trophy, went 7-4 while beating Florida and Tennessee for the first time since the Fillmore administration. The loss to Clemson probably scotched any real chances he had of winning the thing, but still worth a mention.

3. Hold onto your balls here, we’re about to agree with Mark May: Jeff Bower, Southern Miss. Went 6-5 despite being functionally homeless for a good stretch of the season and won out in their bowl game against the Arkansas State Indians. (That’s woo-woo Indian, not red-dot Indian, for those wondering about the whole NCAA racist mascot thing. We’d love it if Albert the Gator could be made into a politically incorrect mascot, but the closest thing we’ve thought of is a redone Albert with a fresh baby crammed in his mouth, and that’s just hardcore, not offensive. Suggestions, to a certain extent, will be taken below.)

And that’s just three off the “rehabbin’” list of coaches-that doesn’t include candidates like Mack Brown, a coach reeling off the best season of his life behind a monstrous program he himself largely created, and Pete Carroll, who happens to be coach of the currently undefeated national champion on Dec. 22.

Instead, they go with sentiment and Joe, whose notable achievements in the past five years have been hanging referee dolls from his door and slowly watching his son turn quality quarterback recruits into scrambling, concussed pick machines. Because he’s 79! And won a lot of games a few decades ago! And he’s good ol’ Joe Pa! (Pass the scotch and tell me the one about Beano Cook and Doc Blanchard in a bar in Singapore again, Joe!)

Which are all true, of course: Joe Pa exemplifies both the Tao and De of how to be a college coach the right way, devoting the better half of his life’s effort and a considerable amount of his money to the university he calls home. Was he the best coach this year, though, comrade? And do you reward someone for cleaning up their own mess? Do you dig rhetorical sentences at the end of mini-columns? The answer to all of these questions is no, comrade. Joe Pa got it for being cute and old and venerable, and that’s lazy like falling asleep with half a burrito stuck in your mouth. (We’re looking at you, Aaron Taylor. You know it happens all the time-otherwise, how would you explain the perpetually askew mouth?)

Struggle vigorously against the sentimental bourgeoisie columnists who tell you otherwise! You only have your freedom to gain and your chains to risk!