By Woodrow Carroll
The college football season came to an end with the National championship game. LSU defeated Clemson, 42-25. With 40 bowl games in all, some are bound to be good, bad, ugly, and exotic.
Perhaps a bit overlooked at times is the sponsorship of the bowl games.
The first game out of the blocks was the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl. The Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village sponsored the game. Buffalo won, 31-9, over Charlotte. It was as a way to attract business to the Village.
Next was the Frisco Bowl. Nothing exotic. Kent State won, 51-41, over Utah State. The FCS Championship game between North Dakota State and James Madison, won by North Dakota, 28-20, was played at the same site as the Frisco Bowl. A crowd of 12,120 attended the Frisco Bowl at Toyota Stadium in suburban Dallas. The FCS championship attracted 17,866.
The Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Ala., with Arkansas State taking the measure of Florida International, 34-26, never lost its sponsor, because the game never landed a corporate backer!
The Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit had favored Eastern Michigan playing Pittsburgh. Close at hand to Detroit, EMU, which lost 34-30, pulled in 34,765 and was the best gate in the bowl’s six-year history.
Former Northern Illinois University coach Rod Carey, in his first year as head coach for the Temple Owls, closed out the regular season with an 8-4 record. Unfortunately, Carey’s Owls were no match for North Carolina in the Military Bowl.
Temple’s 55-13 loss to the Tar Heels was the most one-sided of all the bowl games.
Carey took the Temple job when Manny Diaz left the Temple for the head coaching position at Miami. Diaz’s departure forced the Owls into a hurried replacement for Diaz with Carey the choice.
The fates were not kind to either Carey or Diaz. Diaz’s Miami Hurricanes were shut out, 14-0, by Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl.
Miami was the only bowl team to be shut out.
The Big 12 Conference owes a bit of thanks to Texas. The Longhorns took care of favored Utah, 38-10, in the Alamo Bowl. As it turned out, Texas was the only Big 12 team among six conference sides in bowl action that emerged victorious. And, let’s not forget that Big 12 champion Oklahoma was on the short end of a 63-28 thrashing by LSU in the Peach Bowl national championship semifinal playoff game.
The Birmingham (Ala.) Bowl, which saw Cincinnati roll over Boston College 38-6, was the second consecutive season Boston College’s bowl venture impacted by the weather.
Last season, the First Responder Bowl (Dallas), in which Boston College was scheduled to face Bosie State, ended up being canceled due to inclement weather. This time there was a 91-minute delay starting midpoint in the first quarter.
President Donald Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, made an appearance at Monday night’s national championship game between LSU and Clemson. The four teams involved in the final four, LSU, Clemson, Oklahoma, and Ohio State, were from states Trump carried in the 2016 election.