In Sunday night’s GMAC Bowl, the last bowl game before the BCS Championship, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane was poised to make history. Tulsa had a chance become the first team in NCAA history to have a 5,000-yard passer, 1,000-yard rusher and three 1,000-yard receivers. Paul Smith needed to throw for 247 yards and Charles Clay was 45 receiving yards short going into the game against the Bowling Green Falcons. The game turned out to be a rout, and for poor Bowling Green, Tulsa’s pursuit of the record books made it worse.
With 7:30 left in the 4th quarter, already holding a 56-7 lead, Smith passed to Clay for 9 yards to put Clay over the 1,000-yard mark. Smith at that point had 274 yards, so history was made. Finally it’s time to remove the starting quarterback and run out the clock, right?
Well, no. Smith also came into the game having thrown for 300 yards in 13 straight games, a record he shared with Ty Detmer. Obviously this is a really important record to have all to yourself, so Smith threw passes on 3 of the next 7 plays of the drive, completing two and reaching 306 yards passing. Huzzah! Now it’s time to call off the dogs, right? There’s under 4 minutes left, a 49-point lead is insurmountable, it’s not really necessary to do anything but run. Right? Right?
Well, no. Smith threw one more pass for a 6-yard touchdown. The 63-7 final score made it the most lopsided bowl game ever, breaking the previous largest victory margin set by Alabama in its 61-6 rout of Syracuse in the 1953 Orange Bowl. Congratulations to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane on such tremendous, meaningful, important accomplishments and for being paragons of class and sportsmanship! I say that with absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever. Right? Right?
Well, no. And by the way, I’ve heard of “golden showers” but a Golden Hurricane? Absurd! – Joe Guckin
on Jan 7th, 2008 at 3:11 PM
I just don’t get this argument about how wanting to play 60 minutes of a football game is somehow unsportsmanlike. Why should players have to stop playing because the other team sucks? I just don’t get it. When you’re out there and you’re geared up to play, the last thing you want is a coach to tell you to sit because you’ve been playing too well. It’s one thing in Pee-Wee league. But in college and pro sports, I just don’t get these constant accusations of bad sportsmanship when a team plays a full 60 minutes.
on Jan 7th, 2008 at 7:31 PM
I’ll try to speak slowly so everyone will understand.
Playing. Conservatively. When. A. Game. Has. Long. Since. Been. Decided. Is. NOT. The. Same. As. Not. Playing. A. Full. Sixty. Minutes. Or. Not. Trying. To. Win.
And. There’s. No. God-Given. Right. To. Play. An. Entire. Game. No. Matter. How. Great. You. Are. Or. How. Great. You’re. Doing. In. A. Particular. Game.
on Jan 8th, 2008 at 1:13 AM
As a graduate of Bowlng Green I appreciate your POV JIP but a record is a record and everyone has a right to reach their goals within the rules of the game. Although when did they start including bowl stats in season awards. I always thought they we’re asterisk laden.
on Jan 8th, 2008 at 9:07 AM
The bigger question is why the hell was this game even played, especially January 6th? Bowling Green vs. Tulsa? Really???
As for the sportmanship, I agree with Cyd when it comes to the NFL and other professional sports. But running up the score in college (and on down to high school, little league, T-ball, etc) should be frowned upon. I manage my softball team in the New York gay league and whenever we’ve had a huge lead, I pull things back. I have my base coaches hold runners and will make substitutions so that we are not running up the score on an obviously inferior opponent.
on Jan 8th, 2008 at 9:34 AM
There was a time when I agreed with this philosophy. But a couple years ago in a league game in the gay football league here, my team was up, 20-0, with about 10 minutes left. I pulled my starters and told my team, “Don’t be afraid to let them score. We want them to feel good about this game, too.” It was soon 20-14 and they had the ball. I reinserted the starters and we won by two touchdowns. But I learned then (as did Joe Paterno the year he pulled back against Indiana and lost a shot at the National Championship for it) that you don’t stop playing until the game is over.
on Jan 8th, 2008 at 11:36 AM
Guckin,
If these were minor records and it wasn’t a bowl game, I might agree with you. Might. The records set by Tulsa are the kind that may never be broken. Don’t try to pretend it is wrong for them to strive toward those goals. They were throwing screen passes. They weren’t chucking it down field. How about Bowling Green plays some defense and stops them from getting the records? I assume you are also against spanking children and would like to eliminate dodge ball. How about this…I’ll make an assertion as absurd as yours. It was bad sportsmanship for Bowling Green to put up such a poor effort. Isn’t it more sporting to give your opponent a good game? And speaking of “paragons of class”, nice golden showers comment. Real classy! That wasn’t hypocritical at all. I say that with absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever. Right? Right?
on Jan 8th, 2008 at 1:48 PM
If you were my child, I’d spank you hourly and hurl dodge balls at your head in between.
Incompetence doesn’t equal bad sportsmanship any more than excellence equals good sportsmanship.
It’s not wrong to strive for records. But there’s a proper time and place for everything and under the circumstances it was utterly classless, after getting the 5K/1K record and the 300-yard games record, to throw one more pass to get a touchdown. There’s no shame in only winning 56-7 and not getting the record for the most lopsided bowl victory ever…except in the minds of these modern-day people who have decided, because they once nearly lost a game they should’ve won, due to their own incompetence in not realizing they didn’t have a large enough lead with the amount of time left in the game, that they have to destroy every opponent until the bitter end and beyond.
And records that “may never be broken” are broken all the time. Look up Ruth, Babe and Gehrig, Lou for two examples.
on Jan 9th, 2008 at 2:06 AM
It was not Tulsa’s job to keep the game close or competetive. Bowling Green playing defense as if they had never heard of or seen the forward pass.
on Jan 9th, 2008 at 2:14 AM
Who is saying Tulsa was supposed to keep the game competitive?
on Jan 9th, 2008 at 4:24 AM
Man, count me as one who’d failed to lose many nights of sleep wondering who would break the record set by Bama in that fabled win over Syracuse. I mean, that’s the kind of record you tell your kids about, assuming you want them to feel bad for you trying to hype up an utterly meaningless record coming about in an utterly irrelevant post-season affair that makes me pine once more for some sort of rationality to come out of an increasingly bizarre sport.
I don’t agree with Joe that this is some kind of nadir in the annals of sportsmanship. But y’all are insane if you think that Tulsa was in any danger of losing this game with 7:30 left in the fourth quarter. Bowling Green would have had to score 7 touchdowns just to tie – 6 touchdowns with 6 two-point conversions wouldn’t have sufficed! Which is more than they’d scored in any game all year. And they’d have had to do it without their starting quarterback.
Now, if Tulsa were feeling AT ALL like there was even a 1% chance of them losing (which there was not – the possibility existed but I would bet anything was less than 1%) they would have used the greatest weapon they had: the clock. They chose to do something else – RUN UP THE SCORE. Say what you want about whether that constitutes good sportsmanship, but don’t pretend like Tulsa somehow improved their chances of winning by passing the ball. They did no such thing.
That’s what I like about tennis. There’s no such thing as running up the score – there’s no clock, and yet (unlike baseball/softball) there’s a goal you’re trying to reach. And until you reach it, you go all out.
on Jan 9th, 2008 at 10:40 PM
Very unsportsmanlike…jeers for Tulsa.
I don’t know exactly who was playing out there in the fourth quarter for either team, but if the starters stayed out there for Tulsa the whole game then shame on them. It’s a bowl game, you’ve got a fourty/fifty point lead in the fourth quarter and quite a few players on the bench who rarely get the opportunity to play sitting the bench in a rare situation in which they ought to be on the field getting some live game action.
Let’s not even try to equate a 20 point lead to one twice its size if not more.
If some people on this blog were coaching ND during the 70′s we would have never had the chance to see “Rudy”…..he never would have seen the field.
on Jan 10th, 2008 at 12:25 AM
An athlete Gunkin must have never been. I have yet to see any sport where they just simply stopped or put the water boy in just because the other team is losing.
The goal of your team is to win and if you have the opportunity to set milestones along the way, be it for the team or individual, the damn it go for it.
A coach has never told his team we’ve almost accomplished our goal, so let’s stop and go home knowing that we could have done more, but were satisfied with getting just enough.
I’m sure the other team never said we’re not going to win, let’s just stop and go home. Hopefully they kept fighting to the end, like a team or individual is suppose to do in sports.
on Jan 10th, 2008 at 7:21 AM
Nixon….you mean you’ve NEVER seen a basketball game in which a coach clears the benches late in a game that has long since been decided?
Basketball athlete I’m certain you never were, nor have you ever watched on TV.
(Spoken as a once and former bench warmer once upon a time
)
The arguments against Joe’s comments are getting more ridiculous…quit wasting your time defending the indefensible.