Bowls: There are a lot of them. As a public service, the Doc is here to rank each game according to five crucial criteria, with help from the patron saint of the game in question. Today: The Insight Bowl! Teams. Nebraska Cornhuskers (10-3) vs. Washington Huskies (6-6).
Particulars. Tonight, 10 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Favorite: Nebraska (–13½)
Patron Saint: Late World War II paratrooper and p Don Coryell, widely considered one of the fathers of the modern passing game after two high-flying decades as head coach of San Diego State and the San Diego Chargers. Coryell took the Aztecs from a small college obscurity to a legitimate West Coast presence in the late sixties and early seventies, before moving on to build six playoff teams in 14 years in the NFL, smashing most of the league's passing records in the process.
• Locale. Qualcomm Stadium is more than just a football stadium: With "numerous clubs, lounges, and restaurants," you can host parties there, conferences, meetings, bar mitzvahs – even get married in front of an audience of up to 70,000. Even if you're looking for something a little more … quaint, don't let a little water or tens of thousands of empty seats looming over your cherished vows as they echo throughout an aging, corporately-named edifice ruin the greatest day of your life – rent today!
• Tradition. The bowl existed for 20 years (1978-97) as the destination of the WAC champion, which – prior to the league’s ill-fated expansion and fragmentation in the mid-nineties – almost always meant BYU: LaVell Edwards’ Cougars played in the first seven and eleven of the first sixteen Holiday bowls, winning five and securing an eventual national championship by beating Big Ten also-ran Michigan in 1984.
There was the wild BYU comeback over SMU in 1980, the second in a nine-year stretch in which the game was decided by four points or less seven times, but the Holiday really earned its high-scoring rep in the late eighties, when Oklahoma State, Penn State and Texas A&M scored 62, 50 and 65, respectively, in consecutive blowouts of Wyoming, BYU and BYU again from 1988-90. Cue Barry Sanders in 1988:
See also: Here, here, here and here, none of which contributed to Sanders' record-breaking season total on the ground.
Also of note: the Holiday is where jilted BCS contenders go to die – Texas in 2003, Cal in 2004 and Oregon in 2005 all thought they deserved the bigger bucks in January, and all subsequently flopped against underdogs (Washington State, Texas Tech and Oklahoma) in San Diego. If Nebraska has any notion that it deserved more courtesy from the heavy hitters, it should keep quiet about it.
• Swag. In addition to a Fossil watch, sweatshirt and cap – not to mention trips to SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo, which are nothing to sneeze at – players receive a Best Buy gift card for an undisclosed. That's not quite the shopping spree afforded to participants in the Capital One and Champs Sports bowls, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
• Sponsors, trophies and other ambiance. Sadly, longtime sponsor Pacific Life Insurance has yielded to a new corporate overlord, San Diego-based Bridgepoint Education – a private, for-profit company offering post-secondary degrees through two subsidiaries, Ashford University and the University of the Rockies – likely signaling the end of the most consistently snigger-worthy trophy in sports: The Pacific Life whale. Okay, seriously, it's not funny. It's really not. I mean, maybe sometimes. But otherwise, grow up, man.
• This year's match-up. Either oddsmakers are reading Washington's three-game winning streak and Nebraska's simultaneous offensive slide as signs that the gap between these teams has narrowed since September, or they think the 56-21 beatdown the 'Huskers delivered in Seattle on Sept. 18 was a serious fluke. Nebraska thoroughly dominated that game in every sense, killing Jake Locker's Heisman campaign in a matter of hours while unleashing its own star, Taylor Martinez, for a breakout afternoon.
Nebraska ended the regular season averaging 50 yards more per game than Washington, and allowing almost 100 less; the 'Huskers outscore U-Dub by 10 points per game on the scoreboard, and allow two full touchdowns lesson the season. If these teams were five touchdowns apart in September, it's hard to see where the Huskies are supposed to have come up with the other three that the 14-point spread reflects in the meantime.
• Star power. Martinez thoroughly outplayed Locker the first time around, and even then, it may have had more to do with the relative strength of the defenses (Nebraska finished in the top 10 nationally in total, scoring and pass efficiency D for the second year in a row) than the merits of the quarterbacks. But both are anxious to go out tonight with a bang – Locker to redeem his dreadful effort in September and salvage as much of his tarnished draft stock as possible against a top defense in his final college game, Martinez to prove that he can still generate the fireworks that made him one of the breakout stars of the first half of the season.
Between injuries, diminishing returns and some ugly transfer rumors, Martinez has had a rough two months – he hasn't passed for a touchdown since the Oct. 30 win over Missouri, and hasn't run for one since gashing Kansas State for four scores on national television on Oct. 7. Tonight, with the nagging injuries behind him, is the time for the real Martinez to show himself.
Final rating: out of five.
There's a good chance Washington will be far, far more competitive tonight, in its first bowl game since 2002, than it was back in September. And that could still amount to a 17-point 'Husker win.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
Nikki Cox Carla Gugino Ana Hickmann Mischa Barton Jamie Lynn Sigler
