Before the bowls, we explored the idea of which games meant more to each team; which games mattered to one team in particular; and which games were going to be more central as revealers of conference strength.
Now that the bowls are over, though, there’s another exercise to engage in — judging the bowls based on how they played out.
It stands to reason that a blowout will reflect differently on a team compared to a squeaker. This is not the best arena in which to compare conferences so much as individual teams, since one game’s progressions and plot twists shouldn’t be assigned excessive weight, the weight known as conference-based significance. Which teams affirmed both positive and negative reputations in the bowls, and which teams offered strong reasons to be reconsidered in positive or negative ways?
Here are 10 foremost examples:
10 – MARSHALL
The Thundering Herd wouldn’t have caused a big splash had they defeated MAC champion Northern Illinois by 10 points. However, in trucking the Huskies by 29, the Herd — the same team that gave up 67 points to Western Kentucky and then slogged past Louisiana Tech in an ugly C-USA Championship Game — made sure their 2014 season would be seen in strongly favorable terms. Marshall is a team that responded to a late-season decline by regrouping in full for its bowl game.
9 – AUBURN
The Tigers couldn’t quite put the pieces together during the regular season, but they still won at Kansas State and hammered LSU — the team that beat Wisconsin — at home. Therefore, the Tigers could have written their 2014 story in a significantly more positive way had they been able to dispose of a Wisconsin team being led by an interim/caretaker coach, Barry Alvarez. The inability of Auburn to fix its problems after a month off makes this season feel 100 times worse than it would have been if the Tigers had been able to right their wrongs. When a talented team follows a perplexing three-month journey with an equally baffling bowl — one season after being the national runner-up with the same quarterback — it’s time to do a lot of soul-searching.
8 – BOISE STATE
The Broncos didn’t have to win the Fiesta Bowl to uphold their reputation. No one would have been overly critical of the team had it lost to Arizona by a small margin. Yet, by beating the Wildcats and looking like the better-coached team for most of the afternoon in rainy (but dome-shielded, hint, hint, Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco…) Glendale, Boise State showed — as did other teams in the bowl season — that while its conference wasn’t all that great, its own brand is strong and intact in its own right.
7 – KANSAS STATE
The Wildcats, the third-best team in the Big 12 during the regular season, played UCLA, the third-best team in the Pac-12 during the regular season. The Alamo Bowl was one of the better measuring-stick games of the bowl season, and though the final score looked respectable (40-35), Kansas State was badly outcoached, outhit, and outworked in this game. UCLA’s sloppiness enabled the Wildcats to “Snyderball” their way back into contention, but UCLA maintained the upper hand to the end. This was one of two games that really took the mask off teams in the second tier of the Big 12, behind TCU and Baylor.
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Not only getting drilled, but getting drilled by an opponent quarterbacked by Cole Stoudt — who had struggled throughout the regular season — exposed Oklahoma as a team which was little better than mediocre on the whole in 2014.
6 – OKLAHOMA
The Sooners should have been steaming mad following their late-season collapse against Oklahoma State. Instead, they were steamrolled by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl. Given that Clemson was playing with its non-preferred quarterback (Cole Stoudt), the 34-point loss reflects that much worse on the Sooners, who are having to retool their coaching staff. That process is now underway, as TSS columnist Allen Kenney writes at his personal blog site, Blatant Homerism.
5 – OREGON
The Rose Bowl is not a negative reflection on Florida State, a team that lived by small margins throughout the regular season and then ran into a perfectly awful storm of bad breaks in the playoff semifinals. That happens. The big story of significance in Pasadena was that Oregon shoved aside injuries and an extended layoff to play an essentially flawless third quarter, ringing up 27 points and showing the nation how to deliver a true knockout punch against a decorated and legitimately great opponent. Not many people thought a Mark Helfrich-coached UO team had this capability. A Chip Kelly team, maybe, but not Helfrich. Oregon definitely changed reputations and perceptions, regardless of next Monday’s result in JerryWorld.
4 – ARIZONA
The Wildcats won the Pac-12 South, which certainly deserves to be seen alongside the SEC West as the toughest division in college football in 2014. Yet, while SEC West flag-bearer Alabama lost to Ohio State and Urban Meyer, Arizona lost to the weakest of the three Boise State Fiesta Bowl representatives, a team that got drilled by Air Force and had little to offer against Ole Miss. The 1993 Arizona team finished the job in the 1994 Fiesta Bowl against Miami. The 1998 Arizona team didn’t grumble about being left out of the first Bowl Championship Series. It took care of business against Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl. There’s a hollow feeling in Tucson this week after a regular season marked by overachievement was diminished in the Fiesta Bowl.
3 – MISSISSIPPI STATE
The Bulldogs looked extremely good — and were, in fact, extremely good — in September and October.
Then they started to look conspicuously ordinary.
Dan Mullen had a chance to change all that and remind the nation how good his team once was. The Bulldogs needed to beat Georgia Tech in a matchup of second-best teams in their respective conferences. By losing big — not merely losing — Mississippi State lost the ability to say that this season was special on the largest possible scale.
Only one team made more of a statement in the bowl season than Georgia Tech. The value of the Yellow Jackets’ thumping of Mississippi State cannot be overstated for the ACC.
2 – GEORGIA TECH
Everything Mississippi State wanted to do, Georgia Tech actually achieved. By not only winning the Orange Bowl but winning it so decisively, the Yellow Jackets announced themselves as a Big Effing Deal — in capital letters. Georgia Tech can legitimately say that it has become the third especially formidable team in the ACC, joining Florida State and Clemson.
1 – OHIO STATE
It was one thing to beat a Wisconsin team whose coach, Gary Andersen, basically had one foot out the door in the Big Ten Championship Game. However, being able to take down Alabama with third-string quarterback Cardale Jones represents a completely different — and far more substantial — accomplishment for Urban Meyer and his staff, especially outgoing assistant Tom Herman (headed for the University of Houston) and still-on-board assistant Ed Warinner. (Side question: How the heck is Warinner not a head coach at another program right now?)
A couple of years ago, right after Alabama’s 2012 national title, Nick Saban was the unquestioned king of the sport. Now, it’s pretty reasonable — or at least a lot more reasonable — to put Saban and Meyer in the same breath as coaches. If Meyer beats Oregon next week, there should be no lingering doubts about that claim.