TAMPA, Fla. — How many times have you heard the nattering nabobs of negativity utter these tired phrases over the last several years?
— Nobody cares about bowl games anymore.
— There are too many bowl games.
— Bowl games just don’t matter in today’s playoff age.
Oh, really?
Tell it to the sellout crowd of nearly 65,000 fans who fought I-4 and I-75 holiday traffic and showed up at Raymond James Stadium Thursday night — two days before Christmas, mind you — to watch the UCF Knights’ historic, euphoric 29-17 victory over the Florida Gators in the Gasparilla Bowl.
Tell it to drenched UCF coach Gus Malzahn, who didn’t get one but two Gatorade showers after this victory and then declared after the game: “We’re just getting started. The best is yet to come. They [the Gators] are a really talented team, they had most of their guys and we beat them handily. This is big for recruiting. Every day we’re fighting against the three in-state schools and a lot of ‘em have really cool logos, but the reality is I believe we’re the program of the future. That’s not just talk. That’s really what’s going to happen.”
Tell it to UCF players like bulldozing running back Isaiah Bowser (35 carries, 155 yards, two TDs) and wide receiver Ryan O’Keefe, who set up one touchdown with a 74-yard run, caught a TD pass of 54 yards, finished with a Gasparilla Bowl record of 251 all-purpose yards and then proclaimed afterward: “We’re the best team in the state. We’ve always thought that but now we finally got a chance to prove it.”
Tell it to those tens of thousands of Knights fans at the game who stayed in the stadium long after the game was over and chanted “U-C-F! U-C-F!” while holding up signs like the one that said, “Eat More Gator.”
And tell it to melancholy Florida Gators quarterback Emory Jones, who has let it be known that he will enter the transfer portal but wanted to hang around and play one last game as a Gator. Afterward, he said somberly, “I really wanted to send those seniors out the right way and we didn’t get it done. I feel bad for those guys right now.”
Make no mistake about it: players, fans and coaches cared about this bowl game.
It mattered.
It was important.
“I get triggered when I hear some of these pundits say bowl games don’t matter,” UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir said. “Tell our fans and Florida’s fans that this game doesn’t matter. Tell the Gasparilla Bowl people that this game doesn’t matter. Everybody’s excited about this game. The legislators and the governor are excited. I even saw Ric Flair in a restaurant the other night in Tampa and he was excited.”
Woooo!
As someone who has covered this bowl under five different names — the magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl, the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl, The Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, the Bad Boys Mowers Gasparilla Bowl and Thursday night’s Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl — I can tell you I’ve never been more excited about attending this third-tier bowl game. Who would have ever thought a Gasparilla Bowl could have an atmosphere that seemed more like a Sugar Bowl? If the Rose Bowl is “The Granddaddy of Them All,” then this Gasparilla Bowl was at least the “Drunk Uncle Al of Them All.”
It was romping, rollicking, frenzied, frolicking fun.
The Thrilla In Gasparilla!
“College football is about regional rivalries. Always has been, always will be — period!” Mohajir said. “I used to work with Howard Schnellenberger at FAU and he used to always say, ‘Football was meant to be played in front of people.’ Well, whenever you get the opportunity to play a regional opponent where the fan bases care about their teams, then you know they’re going to show up and you know it’s going to be exciting.”
I don’t know exactly how this matchup came about, but kudos to Mohajir, UF athletics director Scott Stricklin, the SEC, the AAC and, mainly, ESPN for making this game happen. Hopefully, future bowl organizers now know what can happen if you offer up a regional matchup that fans want to see — even if it’s in a proletarian pre-Christmas bowl game.
Obviously, this game meant much more to UCF fans than Florida fans, mainly because the Knights have always been treated like the annoying little brother by the state’s traditional Big 3 of Florida, Florida State and Miami. Of course, when former AD Danny White self-proclaimed UCF as the 2017 national champions and pushed and prodded the Gators to schedule the Knights on a home-and-home basis, it only fueled UCF’s fan base to aggressively go after the Gators on social media and vice versa.
And that’s why this Gasparilla Bowl sold out in a matter of days. If Florida had been playing SMU or UCF had been playing South Carolina on Thursday night, there would have been about 30,000 fans here. But because it was UF against UCF, each fan base scarfed up their allotment of tickets.
After a depressing 6-6 regular season in which UF coach Dan Mullen got fired, Gator Nation would normally ignore such a lowly bowl game and look ahead to new coach Billy Napier’s inaugural season in 2022. However, I firmly believe UCF fans forced Florida fans to be interested in this game. UCF fans sold out their allotment of tickets because it was finally a chance to play and beat the Gators. Florida fans sold out their allotment of tickets because it was a chance to play the Knights and hopefully shut up UCF’s mouthy fans.
Of course nobody outside of the state cared one iota about this game, but who cares?
This was a bowl game that epitomized what bowls are meant to be: mostly meaningless exhibitions for everybody else, but great fun for the fans, players and coaches involved.
Long live the Bitcoin Beef O’Brady’s Bad Boys Mowers Union Home Mortgage magicJack St. Petersburg Gasparilla Bowl!
