Thursday bowl previews … After tonight, there’ll be just one more sleep before Friday’s national championship semi-finals. Before, we get there, though, there will be four more bowl games on Thursday, assuming none are cancelled at the last minute. And in keeping with out policy of not previewing any bowl game involving 6-6 teams we shan’t comment on tomorrow’s Mayonnaise Bowl between North Carolina and South Carolina other than to note that UNC QB Sam Howell will be playing, while SC DE J. J. Enagbare will not. However, Howell is just about the only top prospect from any of Thursday’s teams who will actually play. Both of Purdue’s top stars – DE George Karlaftis nor WR David Bell – for example, opted out of the Music City Bowl in Nashville (3 PM ET; ESPN) against Tennessee, while the Vols’ G/T Cade Mays won’t play because of a foot injury, and rising junior CB Alontae Taylor opted out.
And Thursday night’s Peach Bowl (7 PM ET; ESPN) between ACC champion Pitt and 10-2 Michigan State had all the makings of a great game featuring two guys who should’ve been Heisman finalists in Pitt QB Kenny Pickett, a top ten prospect for the upcoming draft, and Spartans’ RB Kenneth Walker, but – and stop me if you’ve heard this before – both opted out to begin preparing for the draft. Meanwhile, the one good thing about the Wisconsin-Arizona State match-up in the Las Vegas Bowl (10:30 PM ET; ESPN) – other than the fact that the kids get to spend the holiday season, such as it is, in Vegas – is that no prominent prospect opted out of the game. The bad is that neither team has much in the way of top prospects to begin with.
