Tidy Bowl Recaps

the down and dirty on the bowl games last night

The Alamo Bowl: Texas 26, Iowa 24
Longhorns QB Colt McCoy finished 26/40 for 308 yards for 2TDs, 29 total for the season, tying the NCAA freshman record. He started a little shaky thought, and Iowa did not make it easy. With QB Drew Tate passing for 274 yards, the Hawkeyes took a 14-0 lead in the first quarter and retook the lead at 21-20 with a minute left when Andy Brodell scored his second touchdown on a 23-yard reception. But Iowa botched a wide-receiver trick play pass on first down, which turned the game around for Texas. "It's totally my fault. I'm sick over it," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "Guys competed that long and that hard and that put us in a bad situation." Coach Ferentz, don't feel bad. The Gridiron Gods simply enforced an unwritten rule of the game: any football player named Colt McCoy just has to win.

Meineke Car Care Bowl (seriously, don't these names rankle you just a little?): Boston College 25, Navy 24
BC extended the nation's current longest bowl game win streak to seven when walk-on kicker Borat Steve Aponavicius kicked a career-high 37 yard FG. Aponavicius, who had never played organized football until October of this year, gave BC its first 10-win season since 1984. His reward: he will probably be replaced by a scholarship kicker next season. Well, that, and all the BC coed action he can handle.

Chick-fil-A-Bowl (sigh): Georgia 31, Virginia Tech 24
Georgia rallied from an 18-point deficit to upset the No. 14 Hokies. Georgia scored 28 second-half points to rally from a 21-3 halftime deficit. "At halftime we said, 'Look, we're down 21-3, but all we need to do is get a couple of first downs," said Mike Bobo, the new Georgia offensive coordinator. "We knew we were going to have the opportunity to get some guys open deep if we could protect, and we were able to do that."