Wonderful World of Bowls

Hopefully, our faithful readers have recovered from their initial round of Falcon-related disappointment and have come to terms with the disappointing loss in Arizona. It's a small miracle the Falcons won five games this year. Be happy. Next year looks good.

While the NFL playoffs are in full force right now, I want to focus on my beloved college version of pigskin. Except for the BCS Title Game and Monday's Fiesta Bowl, bowl season is essentially over. While it wasn't the most memorable bowl season in recent years, it had its share of storylines and great games.

With that in mind, here are the first annual OTR Bowl Season Awards, as voted on by me.

The Jeff Francoeur Award for Offensive Futility

Could this award possibly go to anyone other than Oregon State and Pitt in the Brut Sun Bowl? The game ended 3-0. When Mike Bibby can take one shot and equal the score of an entire football game, people are undoubtedly going to be asleep in the stands. Oregon State, who "won" the game, finished with a respectable 273 yards of total offense. Luckily, the turned the ball over three times to prevent any unnecessary scoring. After all, scoring any more than three is just rubbing it in.

The Lawerence Taylor Award for Best Way to Finish a Career

Pardon me Joe Theismann fans, but I couldn't think of a good name for an award for the best-career ending performance. Not career-ending as in Taylor shattering Theismann's leg, but career-ending as in the final performance of a player's career. It was a stretch, I know.

Pat White gets the nod in this one, playing one of the best games of his fantastic West Virginia career against North Carolina in a surprisingly entertaining Meineke Car Care Bowl. Shouldering the doubts of about every football expert in the country relating to his viability as an NFL quarterback, White proceeded to compelte 26 of 32 passes for 332 yards and three touchdowns while running for 55 more yards.

The Mountaineers beat the Tar Heels 31-30, making White the only college quarterback to ever start and win four bowl games. Now, White awaits his professional fate. After a final dominant performance, many people are clamoring for White to be given a shot as an NFL quarterback. Another popular idea relates to him being a "wildcat" quarterback in the league. With the popularity of the wildcat formation exploding in the NFL, White would fit the mold perfectly of a situation-specific dual-threat guy. Whatever the case, the guy was a Hell of a college player.

The Nigel Gruff Award for Outstanding Special Teams

Named after the strong-legged Welsh kicker in The Replacements, this awards shines some light onto the otherwise unknown triumphs of obscure special teamers.

Florida State punter/kicker earned Game MVP honors in a game that the Seminoles won 42-13. Allow that to jiggle around in your brain for a second. Here's a guy who won the Lou Groza award for best placekicker in the country, yet he absolutely dominates the Champs Sports Bowl as a punter.

Granted, it's hard to dominate a game as a punter. Usually, you are an afterthought. But what Gano did, especially early in the game, was remarkable. Gano punted five times, averaging 48 yards per punt. He had three downed inside the 5-yard line when the game was still tight early.

Punters probably get the least credit out of anyone on the field, including kickers. Gano triumphantly strikes a victory for unknown punters everywhere.

The Larry Johnson Award for "I'd Rather be Anywhere but here."

You just finished the regular season undefeated, losing only in the SEC title game to No. 1 Florida. You get to finish off your sesaon by pounding a non-BCS sacrifice in the Sugar Bowl a-la Georgia last year. Life is good right?

It turns out that Bama fans might still be at Tropical Isle downing Hand Grenades after the beatdown in the Superdome. Except, the beatdown was given to the Tide, not by them. Alabama was rolled 31-17 by Utah in a game that they never had a chance of winning.

At the end of the regular season, a reporter asked Nick Saban how it felt to be one of two undefeated teams left in the country. Saban responded along the lines of, "we're the only undefeated team that plays in a real conference." Classy, Nick. Well, Utah's conference might not be real but the drubbing they delivered to your boys sure was.

You lost left tackle and future top-five pick Andre Smith before the game because he was talking to agents. Sorry, but losing a left tackle shouldn't be the difference between you and Utah. You had no desire to play Utah in that game and it showed. John Parker Wilson played the way everyone thought he would all year. Make no mistake, Saban has the Tide on a very quick rise to prominence. But they aren't the indestrutable empire everyone thought they were.

The Ricky Williams Award for Showing up to a Game Way Too High

I'm sure you've heard by now, but after Georgia Tech eeked by Georgia for the first time in seven years, the players chose to commemorate the event with a ring. They didn't win their division, their conference or a national title, but they decided they needed rings. This is about the same as getting those participation trophies when your little league team has a party at Stevie B's to end the season.

How do you explain that ring? When someone sees a ring like that, the know it's from sports. So they ask you: "Hey, what's that ring for?"

Then, you, as a Tech player, would answer: "Well, we hadn't beaten our biggest rival in seven years. In fact, they had actually been pretty dominant in baseball and pretty competitive in basketball too. But finally, we beat them by three points so we got this ring made."

The Jackets also gave head coach Paul Johnson a 53 percent pay increase after what was seemingly the biggest win in Tech history.

To top off their magical season, Tech would get to play a bowl game in their backyard (ensuring people would actually come), against another "overrated SEC team" on national TV. LSU was 7-5 and 3-5 in the SEC. They barely beat Troy. Their defense was a seive. Time for the perfect option to feast.

Well...no. Tech was still high out of their minds after the Georgia win. The problem with putting so much stock into beating one team is that even if you beat them, there's still more football to be played. As far as the mustard nation was concerned, the pinnacle of football greatness had been achieved. They had beaten the Mutts.

The problem was, the defending national champs were still coming to town with their legions of purple and gold faithful. And the Tech program was drunk with Georgia victory joy. Final score: 38-3 Tigers. Put that on your ring.

The Chinese Food Award for Least-Satisfying Impressive Performance

I love Chinese food. It's delicious. In fact, it's one of my favorites. But as common wisdom holds, you're always hungry an hour later after you eat it. It's just not that satisfying, no matter how good it is.

Such is the nature of Georgia's victory over Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl. The Sports Illustrated cover featuring Georgia as the number one team in the country hung on my living room wall as I watched this one on TV. It mocked me. Here I was sweating out the first half of the Capital One Bowl against the Spartans, while the cover asked, "Who will challenge the Dawgs?"

Well, several teams challenged the Dawgs this year. It was a season of well-documented epic disappointments. The defense was terrible all season. The offense was dynamic but sometimes prone to fatal errors.

So I smiled just a little as the Georgia defense recorded five sacks and erased Javon Ringer from relevancy in the game. I cringed with each Matt Stafford completion, moving him ever closer to NFL riches. And I wasn't overly excited when Knowshon Moreno posed in the end zone after his brilliant, game-sealing touchdown catch. It's unlikely we'll ever see him in the end zone again as a Bulldog.

Georgia played one of its most impressive overall games of the season. It ensured yet another 10-win campaign and a top-15 finish in the polls. Not a bad year by any standards. But it has to be the most diasppointing "good" year in football in the last 10 years.

It's the offseason now, which means there's great hope for next year. I can't wait to see the Dawgs tee it up in Stillwater in September.