PURDUE WON A BOWL GAME

Purdue won a bowl game. This is really the story here, because it’s not like Purdue has a history of winning bowl games. Correction: It’s not like Purdue has a history of even going to bowl games, much less winning them. Purdue has been playing football since 1887. In that time, the Boilermakers have been to just 18 bowl games, with their last win in a bowl game coming in 2011 in the Little Caesars Bowl.

The Little Caesars Bowl doesn’t even exist anymore, so yes: Purdue’s last bowl win literally poisoned and killed the bowl game that let it happen. Did we mention the coach’s last name was Hope? And that no one could blame a Purdue fan for hating the universe, or the bitter sense of irony a Purdue fan has to wear to survive even five average minutes of being a Boilermakers fan across time?

Or that—despite this encouraging a bull rush on kneeldowns, and probably being a bad idea at large—no one can or should blame Purdue for running a fake kneeldown during a 38-35 win over Arizona.

It worked, for one, and led to a field goal in what turned out to be a 38-35 victory. It looked cool, which is also very important in football. It made the opponent very, very angry and embarrassed, which is also very important to do in football, and very easy when the coach on the other sideline is rage-prone Rich Rodriguez.

Most importantly, when Gus Malzahn runs this play, the call on the field is “THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY BOOT!” because the name of the fake kneel is “Woody,” it almost always involves the smallest running back on the team getting the ball, and because anytime one can take an excuse to yell “THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY BOOT!” on a football field, one should.

In summary: Purdue won a bowl game, and that’s really, really unusual by the numbers, delightful in the execution, and probably means the Foster Farms Bowl will die sometime in the next three years.