By Mike Luce
For those of you who may have missed the opening weekend of the 2017 college football bowl season, a total of 10 teams played in five games. Five of those teams emerged victorious. Five did not. Another game took place on Tuesday. More games follow. You may not have been aware of this. That’s where The College Football Report comes in.
First, a recap of The Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl
Akron Zips 3 vs. Florida Atlantic Owls 50 (at FAU Football Stadium in Boca Raton, FL)
That final tally isn’t a typo: the match was anything but competitive. After a brief sign of life in the first quarter culminated in a missed chip shot from the Owl’s 21, the Zips faded fast and trailed for the remainder. Even the hefty 22-point spread wasn’t in doubt for long. The close of the first quarter said it all. With the quarter winding down to a scoreless tie, FAU drove the ball to a first-and-goal. Three missed opportunities later saw Florida Atlantic coach Lane Kiffin (yes, that Lane Kiffin) stomping the sidelines in open frustration. His team reached the postseason on a 10-game win streak including victories by a least a two-touchdown margin in all but one (a five-point W over Marshall) game during that stretch. On Tuesday, viewers were treated to Lane Kiffin Face following a dud draw play on third-and-goal. Kiffin doesn’t take failure with grace (nor is he a fan of sportsmanship, as the score suggests) and anything short of a touchdown was unacceptable. A hurry-up snap and toss to the endzone on 4th-and-goal and, bingo, Owls 7, Zips zip and the rout was on.
Executives at Cheribundi no doubt would have preferred a more competitive game. Having signed on as the bowl sponsor until 2019, Cheribundi needed the contest to attract at least some marginal attention to bolster the awareness of its tart cherry beverages nationwide. Rightly so. We could all stand to benefit from learning more about this magical beverage. For example, Cheribundi Tart Cherry Juice has “the highest ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) capacity” among the other 32 (unnamed) “healthy beverages,” with an ORAC unit measurement 1.4 times higher than the next highest juice. Any beverage that can be measured in Radicalness must be pretty awesome.
The tart (aka sour, aka dwarf) cherry is the lesser-known cousin of the sweet cherries we all enjoy but refuse to buy for $9.99 per pound. Tart cherries are used worldwide in desserts and other dishes. However the only product containing tart cherry juice you may recognize is Lindeman Kriek Lambic, the bastard offspring of Belgian beer and cough syrup. That stuff is disgusting. A bit like Malört, Lindeman’s clings to a sliver of misguided souls who believe paying a premium for rank booze (fizzy and pink in this case) signifies something other than utter foolishness. Lindeman’s is like carbonated anti-Pedialyte: it tastes terrible and leaves you dehydrated and hung over.
Onward!
The Inaugural DXL Frisco Bowl
Southern Methodist Mustangs (-4) vs. Louisiana Tech Bulldogs
Wednesday, December 20, 7 p.m. ESPN (Toyota Stadium in Frisco, TX)
Back in April, the American Athletic Conference sold the rights to the (now defunct) Miami Beach Bowl to ESPN. Ignoring the three-year history of the venerable bowl, The Worldwide Leader picked up stakes and packed for Frisco, TX. The name is misleading: Frisco isn’t so much a standalone town as a far flung burb of the Dallas-Fort Worth megaplex. In addition to other notable attractions, such as a pretty sweet mall and an Ikea, the National Videogame Museum also calls Frisco home. (Readers in Texas take note: the NVM now offers three college scholarships to locals. Other criteria and qualifications are as yet unknown.) We feel the hours invested years ago in Super Dodgeball, Coach K College Basketball, and Super Mario 3, should make us eligible for exception to the residency requirement should we decide to reboot (ho ho!) college.
CFR pick: Over 71 (now up to 71.5 at some books) in what figures to be a high-scoring affair.
The Chicken: Mustangs by 25
Up next: More football games.
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Previously: The World’s Greatest College Football Report’s Bowl Preview Part 1.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on December 20, 2017