SI:AM | Give Me the Liberty Bowl, or Give Me Death!

And the story behind TCU’s psychedelic toad.

Good morning, I’m Josh Rosenblat. After a sleepy start, bowl season lived up to the hype last night.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏟️ Changes to bowl season?

🐸 TCU’s Hypnotoad

🏈 New NFL mock draft

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Twooo pig sooie

Too many bowl games? It sure felt that way before last night. Ross Dellenger even reported that bowl officials are looking into a host of bowl-related issues, including shifting game dates to earlier in December, incorporating more bowls into a larger College Football Playoff and adding NIL payments to players who play in the games. But the most interesting aspect that Dellenger reports is that the group may look into “stiffening” the bowl eligibility requirements.

“It’s important to remember that the bowl system is a market-driven system. No one is forcing communities to host them and conferences to participate in them,” says Nick Carparelli, the executive director of Bowl Season, the organization that operates the 41 bowl games. “We are hoping to find out from commissioners what the number will be. Do their teams want to participate at 6–6 or 5–7? Our system is geared for that, and we can continue with that. But we’ve got to find out.”

When you get into the numbers, as Dellenger does, the argument begins to take shape. For example, Dellenger writes, “In nine of the last 10 years, the number of bowl spots have out-numbered the number of bowl-eligible teams, forcing bowls to incorporate those with 5–7 records.”

In the 21 bowl games played before yesterday, nine of them finished with the final score within one possession. There have been relatively few memorable moments, and the brand-name schools playing in the early bowl games (most notably Florida and Baylor) lost their games by a combined score of 60–18 to Oregon State and Air Force, respectively.

But bowl season’s final matchup of mediocrity took place last night between 6–6 Arkansas and 6–6 Kansas. It was everything bowl defenders could ask for as a reason to keep these games around.

The Razorbacks came into the Liberty Bowl with a roster in flux. They had 16 players out, mostly due to opt-outs and the transfer portal, including a number of key defensive pieces. The Jayhawks, on the other hand, were motivated to complete an impressive turnaround from a 2–10 season a year ago.

But as the game got underway, Kansas’s turnovers did them in, falling behind 31–7 in the second quarter. Midway through the third quarter it was 38–13.

Then their high-powered offense kicked it into gear, giving us one of the most thrilling bowl games in years. With just over a minute left in the game, Kansas QB Jalon Daniels tossed a 10-yard touchdown pass to cut the deficit to 38–30. But with the Jayhawks out of timeouts, they needed an onside kick … and they got it.

With that accomplished, Kansas needed to work quickly. They did, putting themselves a two-point conversion away from tying the game with a 21-yard touchdown pass with 41 seconds left. They got that much-needed two-point attempt, and the game was off to OT.

The teams matched each other in the first two overtimes before heading into the back-and-forth, two-point conversion portion of organized chaos, where Kansas saw a trick play fall incomplete to end the game.

The best of Sports Illustrated:

• In today’s Daily Cover story, Richard Johnson details the story behind TCU’s Hypnotoad.

This season, the football program’s embrace of Hypnotoad took on a life of its own, going from field goal distraction to full-on hype video material during countdown videos at Frogs home games. It was also part of a zany mash-up of Willy Wonka movie clips in the fourth quarter of the win against Tech.

• After that Kansas-Arkansas thriller, North Carolina took No. 15 Oregon down to the wire in the Holiday Bowl, where this doinked-in extra point for the Ducks with 19 seconds left proved to be the difference.
• Albert Breer writes about why Tom Brady or Jimmy Garoppolo could reunite with Josh McDaniels in Las Vegas after Derek Carr’s benching.
• Emma Baccellieri reveals 2022’s most representative hitter in MLB.
• Conor Orr introduces you to the next member of Sean McVay’s coaching tree: Rams assistant head coach Thomas Brown.
• Kevin Hanson has a quarterback going first in his latest 2023 NFL mock draft.
• The Dolphins confirmed Tua Tavovailoa’s concussion yesterday.

The top six…

… college football bowl games in New Year’s Six history, according to Pat Forde:

• Cotton Bowl: Jan. 1, 1979. Notre Dame 35, Houston 34. The Joe Montana chicken soup game.
• Fiesta Bowl: Jan. 1, 2007. Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42. The trick-play trinity.
• Orange Bowl: Jan. 2, 1984. Miami 31, Nebraska 30. The U arrives, and the state of Florida assumes command.
• Peach Bowl: Dec. 31, 2012. Clemson 25, LSU 24. The rise of Dabo, the decline of The Hat.
• Rose Bowl: Jan. 4, 2006. Texas 41, USC 38. Vince Young forever.
• Sugar Bowl: Dec. 31, 1973. Notre Dame 24, Alabama 23. Robin Weber? Robin Weber.

SIQ

Coming into the 2022 college football season, which Power 5 program held the longest active bowl win drought?

Check tomorrow’s newsletter for the answer.

Yesterday’s SIQ: J.J. Watt announced that he would retire following this NFL season, marking an end to a dominant career. But few could have seen his success coming, especially considering where he started his college football career and what position he played. In which position did Watt primarily line up and for which school did he play for during the 2007 college football season?

Answer: Watt played tight end at Central Michigan. Watt was a two-star recruit out of Pewaukee High School, west of Milwaukee. During his freshman season, Watt caught eight passes for 77 yards before transferring to Wisconsin as a walk-on, where he spent the 2008 season making sure the Badgers’ All-American offensive linemen were sufficiently “pissed off,” according to Charlie Partridge, Wisconsin’s defensive line coach during Watt’s time in Madison, due to his effort on the scout team.

That quote was from Tim Layden’s profile of Watt in SI from November 2014, in which Layden describes Watt’s rise to becoming an all-time-great lineman.

“They saw all of these things, and many more, because there is a clock somewhere inside Watt’s head with numbers descending inexorably toward zeroes, counting down his time first as a football player and tangentially—but only tangentially—as a giant corporate pitchman/superhero/celebrity,” Layden wrote.

Now, that clock is just two games away from hitting all zeroes.

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