All the bowl matchups have been set, the College Football Playoff has been filled out, and we’re looking ahead to bowl season. But first, there’s one more regular season game to play. It’s a game that has been played since 1890, and features teams that combine for four national championships and five Heisman Trophy winners. It’s simply known as “The Army-Navy Game”. It will be played for the 119th time this Saturday in Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. This marks the 88th meeting in Philadelphia, a “middle ground” between West Point, New York and Annapolis, Maryland. The game has not been held in an on-campus stadium since World War II, and aside from the 1983 meeting in the Rose Bowl, the game has always been played east of the Mississippi River. Navy holds a 60-51-7 lead in the series, but Army has won the last two games, including a 14-13 nail-biter last year.
The bowl season is fast upon us. There are 41 such games this year, with wide-ranging locations (one of which is outside of the country!) and traditions (the Music City Bowl features a Nashville “hot chicken” eating contest between members of the participating teams). But why do we call these post-season games “bowl” games? The answer goes all the way back to the “Granddaddy of them All”, the Rose Bowl Game. The first such game was not known as the “Rose Bowl” at all; rather, it was called the “Tournament East-West Football Game”, as the game was part of Pasadena, California’s annual Tournament of Roses. It was held in 1902 between Michigan and Stanford. The stadium itself wasn’t completed until 1922, so the first January 1 game played in the stadium was in 1923. It made sense to name the game after the stadium, and thus the 1923 game was the first known as the “Rose Bowl Game”. Later, as other cities sought to bring in tourists around the New Year and introduced the idea of post-season college football games, the games were known as “bowl games” even though they weren’t always played in bowl-shaped stadiums.
Scanning through the season-ending statistics, there are some pretty interesting nuggets to find:
* UMass wide receiver Andy Isabella finished the season with 1,698 receiving yards, 288 more than the #2 player in the nation.
* Wisconsin running back Jonathan Taylor finished with 1,989 rushing yards; Memphis RB Darrell Henderson finished with 1,909. No other back had more than 1,600.
* New Mexico State running back Jason Huntley returned three kickoffs for touchdowns. There were four players that returned two punts for scores, but only one listed as a linebacker – Oklahoma’s Curtis Bolton.
* Houston’s D’Eriq King was responsible for 27.5 points per game – more than the team scoring average for 49 FBS teams.
In small-school news, the Division II playoffs have reached the semi-finals, and there’s a 75% chance we’ll have a first-time (football) champion! Valdosta State (Georgia) has won three Division II football national titles (2004, 2007, 2012). Minnesota State has never won a national title in football, but the Mavericks won a Division II hockey title in 1980. Ferris State (Michigan) has never won a football national title, but the Bulldogs could pull off a somewhat rare feat with two more wins: simultaneous football and men’s basketball champs (the basketball team won the Division II title earlier this year). We’ve talked about Notre Dame (Ohio) before in this space, but to recap, the Falcons have only played football since 2009 and have never won a title. They have won a Division II wrestling title (in 2014). The finals will be held in McKinney, Texas, on December 15.
Congratulations to JagRag, who wins week 14 (their third weekly win!), scoring 35 points and breaking a five-way tie for first place by hitting the tie-breaker on the nose! Also finishing with 35 points were Jeff4Bama, Ragnor, AllySun, and Paul Herron.
Stay tuned for the season wrap-up and the announcement of the winners!