It had been a local point of pride that the past 17 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowls were sellouts. Last year’s game even sold out with still a month left in the regular season. But the new system, which ends the traditional SEC-ACC Georgia Dome matchup, did not tickle the ticket booth quite as much. The announced attendance of 65,706 was below the 70,000-plus the Dome accommodates.
The bowl’s President and CEO, Gary Stokan, said he was happy with certain trade-offs inherent to the new system. In the short term, the bowl could boast two top 10-ranked teams on the field Wednesday. And, of course, longer range, it is now a part of the college football playoff rotation. All that made a few empty seats more palatable, Stokan said.
Ole Miss misery: It was painful enough that Ole Miss suffered its most lopsided bowl defeat ever. But on the personal level, it also had to deal with the loss of tackle Laremy Tunsil, one of the jewels of the Rebels' vaunted 2013 recruiting class, to a fractured fibula. It continued a trend of offensive line woes for the Rebels.
“When you see Laremy go down — and we’re already down there (near where the injury occurred) — I’m sure it went through people’s minds that, man, we really are struggling right now to get people in the offensive line in positions where they’ve had a lot of snaps this year,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “The only thing I know to fix that is recruiting, and we’ve got to go and build some depth and talent there.”
TCU trickeration: The Horned Frogs cleaned out the playbook early. On their second play from scrimmage, they scored on a 31-yard pass from wide receiver Kolby Listenbee (a former high school quarterback). Also among the 79 plays they ran was an unsuccessful catch-and-lateral play that resulted in a fumble and a reverse that gained little.
On the trick play that set the tone early, TCU coach Gary Patterson said, “It worked just exactly against (in practice) the way it worked against them. It was a touchdown. I think they obviously have got to be a little bit lucky because we had a couple other trick plays that didn’t quite work the way we wanted them to. So, we’ll take the one that happened.”
Peach fame: The first school you associate with Earle Bruce may not be Iowa State, but that is how he'll be preserved forevermore in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Hall of Fame. Most known as the head coach at Ohio State, Bruce took Iowa State to the Peach Bowl in 1979, where the Cyclones lost to N.C. State 24-14. Also inducted was Ted Brown, the Wolfpack back who helped beat Bruce. In two Peach Bowl appearances ('77 and '79), Brown totaled 273 rushing and 84 receiving yards.
Etc.: The Rebels fell to 1-1 all time in this bowl game. Now they know how Georgia Tech felt when they beat the Yellow Jackets 41-18 in the 1971 Peach Bowl. … The loss stopped the Ole Miss bowl winning streak (dating to 2002) at six. Florida State, with a victory over Oregon in the Rose Bowl on Thursday, would take their streak to seven and assume the longest active streak all itself. … The 42 points was the most scored on Ole Miss since 2012 (Texas, 66). … TCU has scored 30 or more points in 15 consecutive games. … The Horned Frogs set school records for most points and largest margin of victory in a bowl game. … They also extended their nation's-best streak for games with at least one interception (15) and one takeaway (25).
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