You know you’re having a bad night when…

the punter gets away with a cheap shot.

Wait ’til Penn Wagers sees that.

A few bowl game notes

From what I saw from the couch:

• What do you get when you take this game and make the Gator defense worse? Why, you get this game. Florida under Meyer has now lost two games in which it was highly ranked and been +4 and +5 in turnover margin. That’s not easy to do. It just goes to show that Heisman Trophy winner or not, it pays to go after the quarterback in Florida’s spread offense hard and heavy.
• That Joe McKnight’s a pretty good looking ballplayer.
• I continue to think that Tubs is kidding himself when he insists that Auburn will continue to be a physical team on offense in its new-fangled spread scheme. But Mario Fannin and Kodi Burns look like they might prosper in it.
• So far, being an interim head coach in a bowl game hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be. Just sayin’, West Virginia fans.
• Chan gets canned, and Tech loses six games in a season for the first time since 2003. All that progress, gone.
• Kentucky struggles against a FSU team missing almost a third of its roster, is losing a bunch of its starters to graduation… and 66 year old Rich Brooks wants to coach there at least another five years. These truly are the good old days in Lexington.

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Not ready for Prime Time… or any time

I’m not sure last night’s Sugar Bowl is worth breaking down, but in any event I’ll save that for a later date. Here’s the on the surface observations I had watching the game:

• To the talking head (I forget who you were) who said earlier in the day something like “often in these games it’s not the primary matchup that everyone points to that decides which team wins”, no.
• The Fox production wasn’t too bad – other than not letting the game get started until almost 9:00 PM and the endless, repetitive commercials – but the broadcast crew certainly was. I’d almost rather listen to Pam Ward.
• One of the best things about the game was that it (once again) exposed the utter asshattery that is Mark May’s anti-Georgia schtick. (Even he sang a different tune after the results were in.)
• Brandon Coutu was born to kick field goals in a dome.
• If you didn’t get a sense of déjà vu watching the game, you obviously didn’t follow mid-90’s Atlanta Falcons football. All of the elements were there: a junk offensive scheme that couldn’t mask a bad offensive line, defense that was an afterthought, undisciplined play and, of course, a head coach who had no answers when his team was getting its ass kicked. All we were missing to complete the picture was a player losing it on the sideline and getting into a shouting match with the coach.
• I didn’t feel embarrassed for Hawaii until the camera cut to the stands and the sideline after the Warriors finally scored their first touchdown. First, watching the band celebrate like they’d seen their team take the lead was bizarre. But then the camera went to Colt Brennan – and the look on his face at that moment reminded me of the kid in first grade we all knew who got caught messing himself in class.
• The stat of the night: Hawaii’s longest play from scrimmage in the third quarter was a roughing the passer penalty.
• Whether you like the BCS as it’s currently comprised, or you’re a playoff advocate, one thing that’s apparent is that strength of schedule needs to be factored into the postseason equation.
• Along the same lines, whatever Boise State’s win in last year’s Fiesta Bowl accomplished for the non-BCS conferences, Hawaii’s loss pretty much wiped out. Nice check’s in the mail, though.
• As lopsided as that game turned out to be, there is a silver lining for Hawaii. After last night, and after the Warriors get obliterated in their ’08 season opener at Florida, they shouldn’t have nearly as much trouble in the future finding D-1 teams willing to schedule them.