SI:AM | Give Me the Liberty Bowl, or Give Me Death!

Good morning, I’m Josh Rosenblat. After a sleepy begin, bowl season lived as much as the hype final evening.

In at this time’s SI:AM:

🏟️ Adjustments to bowl season?

🐸 TCU’s Hypnotoad

🏈 New NFL mock draft

Should you’re studying this on SI.com, you’ll be able to signal as much as get this free publication in your inbox every weekday at SI.com/newsletters.

Twooo pig sooie

Too many bowl video games? It positive felt that manner earlier than final evening. Ross Dellenger even reported that bowl officers are trying into a number of bowl-related points, together with shifting sport dates to earlier in December, incorporating extra bowls into a bigger School Soccer Playoff and including NIL funds to gamers who play within the video games. However essentially the most attention-grabbing side that Dellenger studies is that the group might look into “stiffening” the bowl eligibility necessities.

“It’s essential to do not forget that the bowl system is a market-driven system. Nobody is forcing communities to host them and conferences to take part in them,” says Nick Carparelli, the manager director of Bowl Season, the group that operates the 41 bowl video games. “We hope to seek out out from commissioners what the quantity can be. Do their groups wish to take part at 6–6 or 5–7? Our system is geared for that, and we will proceed with that. However we’ve bought to seek out out.”

If you get into the numbers, as Dellenger does, the argument begins to take form. For instance, Dellenger writes, “In 9 of the final 10 years, the variety of bowl spots have out-numbered the variety of bowl-eligible groups, forcing bowls to include these with 5–7 information.”

Within the 21 bowl video games performed earlier than yesterday, 9 of them completed with the ultimate rating inside one possession. There have been comparatively few memorable moments, and the brand-name colleges taking part in within the early bowl video games (most notably Florida and Baylor) misplaced their video games by a mixed rating of 60–18 to Oregon State and Air Power, respectively.

However bowl season’s remaining matchup of mediocrity passed off final evening between 6–6 Arkansas and 6–6 Kansas. It was the whole lot bowl defenders may ask for as a purpose to maintain these video games round.

The Razorbacks got here into the Liberty Bowl with a roster in flux. That they had 16 gamers out, principally on account of opt-outs and the switch portal, together with quite a few key defensive items. The Jayhawks, then again, had been motivated to finish a powerful turnaround from a 2–10 season a 12 months in the past.

However as the sport bought underway, Kansas’s turnovers did them in, falling behind 31–7 within the second quarter. Halfway by means of the third quarter it was 38–13.

Then their high-powered offense kicked it into gear, giving us one of the thrilling bowl video games in years. With simply over a minute left within the sport, Kansas QB Jalon Daniels tossed a 10-yard landing cross to chop the deficit to 38–30. However with the Jayhawks out of timeouts, they wanted an onside kick … and so they bought it.

With that completed, Kansas wanted to work rapidly. They did, placing themselves a two-point conversion away from tying the sport with a 21-yard landing cross with 41 seconds left. They bought that much-needed two-point try, and the sport was off to OT.

The groups matched one another within the first two overtimes earlier than heading into the back-and-forth, two-point conversion portion of organized chaos, the place Kansas noticed a trick play fall incomplete to finish the sport.

One of the best of Sports activities Illustrated:

This season, the soccer program’s embrace of Hypnotoad took on a lifetime of its personal, going from subject aim distraction to full-on hype video materials throughout countdown movies at Frogs house video games. It was additionally a part of a zany mash-up of Willy Wonka film clips within the fourth quarter of the win towards Tech.

The highest six…

… school soccer bowl video games in New 12 months’s Six historical past, based on Pat Forde:

• Cotton Bowl: Jan. 1, 1979. Notre Dame 35, Houston 34. The Joe Montana hen soup sport.
• Fiesta Bowl: Jan. 1, 2007. Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42. The trick-play trinity.
• Orange Bowl: Jan. 2, 1984. Miami 31, Nebraska 30. The U arrives, and the state of Florida assumes command.
• Peach Bowl: Dec. 31, 2012. Clemson 25, LSU 24. The rise of Dabo, the decline of The Hat.
• Rose Bowl: Jan. 4, 2006. Texas 41, USC 38. Vince Younger ceaselessly.
• Sugar Bowl: Dec. 31, 1973. Notre Dame 24, Alabama 23. Robin Weber? Robin Weber.

SIQ

Coming into the 2022 school soccer season, which Energy 5 program held the longest lively bowl win drought?

Test tomorrow’s publication for the reply.

Yesterday’s SIQ: J.J. Watt introduced that he would retire following this NFL season, marking an finish to a dominant profession. However few may have seen his success coming, particularly contemplating the place he began his school soccer profession and what place he performed. By which place did Watt primarily line up and for which college did he play for through the 2007 school soccer season?

Reply: Watt performed tight finish at Central Michigan. Watt was a two-star recruit out of Pewaukee Excessive Faculty, west of Milwaukee. Throughout his freshman season, Watt caught eight passes for 77 yards earlier than transferring to Wisconsin as a walk-on, the place he spent the 2008 season ensuring the Badgers’ All-American offensive linemen had been sufficiently “pissed off,” based on Charlie Partridge, Wisconsin’s defensive position coach throughout Watt’s time in Madison, on account of his effort on the scout staff.

That quote was from Tim Layden’s profile of Watt in SI from November 2014, by which Layden describes Watt’s rise to turning into an all-time-great lineman.

“They noticed all of this stuff, and lots of extra, as a result of there’s a clock someplace inside Watt’s head with numbers descending inexorably towards zeroes, counting down his time first as a soccer participant and tangentially—however solely tangentially—as an enormous company pitchman/superhero/superstar,” Layden wrote.

Now, that clock is simply two video games away from hitting all zeroes.

Sports activities Illustrated might obtain compensation for some hyperlinks to services and products on this web site.