The final two seconds ticked off with Northern Illinois University trying to line up for a final snap at the Coastal Carolina University’s 3 yard line.

CCU earns it’s first Bowl Championship in the programs history, 47-41.

Almost Game Time ! Should be a Good One !!

Dateline – Orlando, FL

Today marks the official beginning of the NCAA Bowl 🥣 season – 43 and counting. They are underway over in the Bahamas 🇧🇸 and the score is knotted at 7-7 between Toledo and Middle Tennessee.

The second half of the opening twinbill takes place in Orlando, Florida in the Cure Bowl.

While it will be my first visit to the Stadium 🏟 I have seen both of these teams live in recent years.

Last month a ranked Coastal team was upset in Boone by Appy State in a thrilling contest decided in the final minute and Northern Illinois came up short a few years back versus Duke in Detroit’s Motor City Bowl.

Coastal (10-2) dropped two games by a field goal or less during the regular season. The Appy loss knocked them out of the Sun Belt Championship game so they will be well rested heading into the 6pm kickoff.

Northern Illinois(9-4) captured their league crown on December 4th with a hard fought victory over Kent State 41-23. The newly crowned MAC champs 🏆 should be able to match scores with CCU.

Gates open at 4:30 and the game time temperature 🌡 😎 looks to be 85°.

Exploria Stadium is a soccer ⚽️ Stadium that serves as home to both Orlando City and the Orlando Pride.

Plenty of folks around the building wearing Huskies Red, including their band. It will be interesting to see how many fans end up inside of the 25,000 seat facility.

It’s final now in the Bahamas 🇧🇸

middle Tennessee wins 31-24!

It would be easy to ask how a person looking to shine a light on Smaller things for 12 games end up in Cameron Indoor Stadium ?

Well it does meet the criteria of not being in a crowd of over 10K, so there’s that! My mission was to finish my argument that how I would take a step in making the ACC more enjoyable for the non- Big 2 sports would be to add my adopted ” Little School ” Appy State.

They have a fan base, a beautiful campus with big enough facilities and they would bring back the blood rivalry feed feel we had for so long back in the day! Before we drank the kolaide about we so desperately needed the number of television 📺 sets in Boston and Syracuse. Any time I would bring the subject up it would be quickly dismissed with it will never happen because the Powers to Be all think Bigger is Always Better.

It’s an easy argument for all of the ” other ” sports but we all know the $$$ is with Football and Men’s basketball 🏀. Point 1 in regards to football is that Appy has the best winning percentage in the state of North Carolina in the past few years and then earlier this year the Mountaineers took to the road to play at Miami. The Hurricanes finished up number two in the Coastal behind Pitt and was the fifth best out of the 14 team league.

Miami needed a last minute field goal to pull out the victory at HOME of Appy. I would later travel back to Boone and watch them upset Coastal Carolina on their way to another 10 win season.

Their football stadium 🏟 is very comparable to the ones at Duke and Wake Forest and they tend to stuff it full pretty much every home game.

But there still was the other elephant 🐘 in the room – could Appy possibly play hoops in the ACC and would the other teams and their fan bases even care ?

That question was answered last night in front of a packed house in Durham with the Cameron Crazies in full force. Not only did Appy show up but they two separate Duke haymaker Runs in the first half

Down 13 at the break after the second of the runs the Mountaineers still would not fold. They were facing the deepest Duke team since 2015 in their house and they were playing with No Fear.

The third and final Duke run at the end of the contest provided a misleading 25 point margin of victory for the #2 team in the Country. Duke hit 50% from 3 (15-30) so it wasn’t as if they caught the Dokies on an off night

The next stat to check out is the number of minutes played by the starting five. Four of the starters needed to be on the floor for 30+ minutes and the fifth was at 23 minutes.

The only case the people smarter than me (and there’s no shortage of them) can make is the one about the TV sets in Syracuse and Boston.

Stop ✋, just Stop ✋. Just how much money do we need? Let’s make the league fun again, especially for the student athletes and their fan bases that could drive to Boone from Chapel Hill to watch a softball game versus trying to fly to Boston. I will surrender my point about Appy if 30,000 UVA fans fly to Boston for the Fenway Park Bowl in the middle of the week in December. If the rich alums won’t due it for FOOTBALL how can we expect the ” other ” sports fans to do it ????

In my best Lawyer voice I promise to rest my case by I think there’s a case to be made.

For the 3rd time in my eight games Rob Sisk was in the co-pilot seat for the game and I promise you his search to find this showing was a smidgen easier.

In a separate note Duke just lost its second opponent for the scheduled home game for this Saturday, both due to Covid. First it was Cleveland State and then Loyola- Maryland offered to fill in but now rhey can’t make the game either. The search is now on for a 3rd team – Thoughts and Prayers to all of the folks now facing 🙏 the Virus

There was a twin bill slated for the Tuesday afternoon clash of Division 3 schools in Danville this past Tuesday but only the Ladies were able to get their contest in. The men’s contest was slated for 5pm and the pair would have been #6 & #7 of the 12 Games of Christmas 🎄 but there was a Non- Covid issue within the UMW men’s team, making it #6 & #6A.

On paper this like the ultimate mismatch in favor of the visitors but nobody informed the Lady Cougars take couldn’t hang with their guests.

With only 8 dressed players for the game AU burned a great deal of energy out the gate and it paid off in a 15-11 advantage at the end of thr6 1st quarter. Mary Washington eventually wore down AU and headed into the Halftime break with a comfortable lead.

. Please scroll through and find the separate article typed about The Fan who made the entire experience even more adjoining!