Here are your final bowl game results as each game on the schedule reaches its final score.
College football’s bowl season is upon us, with dozens of bowl games from mid December through the National Championship in January. As each bowl final score posts, we’ll update this list with the outcome, then move along to the next wonderful bowl game. Because all bowl games are wonderful.
And finally, for those who don’t like bowl games:
Virtually every bowl will feature countless One Last Times.
A receiver catching his last pass. Roommates hugging each other on the sideline. A flautist playing the fight song for the last time. There will be emotional moments in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl, for goodness’ sake.
Despite itself, college football produces boundless beauty. We pay coaches millions of dollars not to coach, pay search firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to help us make obvious choices, but keep finding reasons why we can’t let student-athletes sign autographs for money.
Bowl games, with their strange politics, title sponsors, and gaudy coach incentive payments, are the pinnacle of ridiculousness and excess. They are maybe the most cynical money-making exercises in a cynical, money-making sport.
And yet, bowls might be the most beautiful thing this sport produces.
Every game means the world to somebody.
Early in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s Camellia Bowl, from the Arkansas State 30, Tucker broke open down the middle of the Red Wolves’ defense. Stockstill was watching for exactly that and hit him in stride at the 10. Tucker bounced off of a tackler and into the end zone for a score.
It was one of four receptions that Tucker didn’t think he’d get a chance to make, and it ended up providing the winning margin in a 35-30 MTSU victory. All Tucker, Stockstill, and the Blue Raiders wanted was a chance to play one more game with each other, and they took full advantage.
If you think about that, or if you watch New Mexico State’s celebrations above, and you still want to complain about championing mediocrity or handing out participation trophies, go ahead. I won’t listen.
Bowl games are good, actually.