Go play football and prove something
Bowl games are increasingly absurd, but they are still games.
Matt Rhule flew down Fremont Street on a zipline the other night, which is about as accurate a description of what a modern-day bowl game is as you’re going to get. For most of the past decade, at least, I’ve had a hard time viewing any non-national championship (or now playoff) bowl as anything other than an alien event. And that was mostly before the current evolution of the sport made bowls about the 18th-most important part of any team’s December and January.
These games are where we get to witness the car crash between coaches and players being offered opportunities to get up close and personal with an orca or take a lap around a NASCAR track or zipline through old-school Vegas, but all while keeping their focus because eventually the expectation is to go play football and prove something.1
Go prove something positive and the winning coach might earn the opportunity to be bathed in French fries, mayonnaise, grass clippings or even get to cheer on, with his team, the ritual sacrifice of a toaster pastry. Given that most of the headlines I’ve seen from bowl season are about these manufactured celebrations designed to capture someone’s attention for 30 seconds—“Fry bath! WSU Cougars dump fries on coach in Potato Bowl win”—the bowls are well aware we’ve progressed from what were once meaningful football contests, past simple exhibitions and fully into the theater of the absurd.
And that’s mostly fine in the present.2 It’s another football game to watch, which is the only point when you really cut through all the crap, and I’m never going to complain about that.
That said, given the reality of this game (which is that most bowls feel mostly like hallucinations now), you could convince me almost anything will happen when Nebraska kicks off against No. 15 Utah in Las Vegas Wednesday.
That’s a good thing for the Huskers, a two-touchdown underdog as of Sunday night.
This was supposed to be the final game for famed head coach Kyle Whittingham. Instead, the Utes and everyone else learned the day after Christmas that Whittingham will be the next head coach at Michigan,3 so he told the team in Vegas and then departed for Ann Arbor. The multi-season wait for head-coach-in-waiting Morgan Scalley was officially over, and he had four days to figure this all out on the fly.
That could play to Nebraska’s advantage. It definitely doesn’t hurt. Somehow, in this land of the absurd, the Huskers are mostly normal.
Yes, they’ll be without “the offense”4 in running back Emmett Johnson (draft prep) as well as starting guard Rocco Spindler (injury recovery for draft prep), but quarterback TJ Lateef is a full go, and the receiving corps is intact.
Defensively, the Huskers are only missing linebacker Dasan McCullough due to opt-out (draft-ish prep), and associate head coach Phil Snow will helm the defense in the absence of fired former DC John Butler. Regardless of Utah’s late coaching shuffle, Snow still has a mountain to climb against what was the second-best rushing offense by success rate in the regular season. The Utes are without two future NFL offensive linemen (understandable opt-outs), but they still have running back Wayshawn Parker (931 rushing yards) and quarterback Devon Dampier (687) to keep things straight-ahead and simple if Scalley chooses.
Parker and Dampier5 were both big hits for Utah from the transfer portal, and an import might also provide the Huskers’ biggest potential edge on Wednesday. Not a player, but the special teams helmed by Mike Ekeler. Nebraska ranked in the top-20 nationally in kick and punt return yards as well as kick and punt return defense.
“You see the first and last games, those are about minimizing mistakes, capitalizing where you can,” said wide receiver and punt returner Jacory Barney Jr.
That all rings true to me, particularly in games where almost nothing is normal.
This being Las Vegas, however, there has to be at least one thing at stake, and there is for Nebraska. The Huskers will either snap or continue a 29-game losing streak to teams ranked in the AP top 25.
I’m not even sure how it would feel if Nebraska ended such a streak in a game that barely feels real, but it wouldn’t hurt to find out.
I liken this to going on vacation, only the last day of your vacation is actually just your high-pressure job that has the potential to influence how thousands of people feel.
I do worry, however, about just how easily bowl antics will offer future historians easy anecdotes when they’re charting the fall of the American empire.
Hard not to feel good for Michigan here, which in the past five years won a national title despite illegal hamburgers, stealing signs, a coach being charged with hacking into computers to steal sensitive photos of athletes and the previous head coach being fired for cause after an extra-marital affair with a subordinate that resulted in domestic violence charges. Only seems right that the Wolverines landed on one of the best coaches of the 21st Century.
At least it was over the final three games.
Given that Whittingham left, maybe NU should keep a close eye on Dampier in this game for future reasons. But also for present reasons.