Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl

Fourth game of the quest, with a Louisville team looking for a winning season against high scoring Southern Miss in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

I thought this would be an easy win for Southern Miss and it started out that way with the Golden Eagles scoring two touchdowns in the first five minutes.  But the Cardinals pulled themselves together and had the game tied at 21 by halftime. Louisville went behind again but a kick-off return tied it up, their defense showed up in the final quarter and a field goal sealed the deal.  Special teams won it for the Cardinals who finished 7-6, a nice start to the Charlie Strong era at Louisville.


There were a number of Brett Favre mentions as expected although I forgot to count them.  Southern Miss quarterback Austin Davis passed Favre's record for touchdown passes.  The game was called by the ESPN studio crew including Lou Holtz.  If you think he's unintelligible in the studio, you should hear him call a game.


Game side notes:
-Beef 'O' Brady's is a chain of family oriented sports bars with three locations in the Cincinnati area.  Looks like a sportier version of O'Charley's with an extra apostrophe next to the O.  Despite the Beef in the name, wings are their most popular item according to voting done on their website. Look pretty good to me, never been to a Beef 'O' Brady's.

  There was a Beef's set-up at the game behind the Southern Miss bench with people sitting at tables at Tropicana Field.  Every time the people at the on field Beef's were shown, they looked completely disinterested in the game so I'm guessing they won a contest to be there. 


-The news before the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl was the fight between the two teams at a beach party dance contest.  Has to be the weakest venue for a pre-game skirmish in football history. Here's how it went down:


  Someone said something disrespectful, did a little jawing after the dance contest… it’s all good,”   said Louisville linebacker Dexter Heyman. It’s “just a little too close to game time, ya know?”.
…
“They started talking trash about us being in Conference USA, [that] we can’t dance… it was stupid. We’ll do our talking on the field,” uttered one Golden Eagle who refused to be identified. “A friendly dance competition and they take it all serious? It’s ridiculous.”

Maybe the Big East and Conference USA can have a dance fight like the Jets vs. the Sharks in West Side Story to settle it for once and all.


-It was only the first Bowl Quest game watched at home and already my wife is mentioning that the only reason I do this is to take over the TV for the three weeks.  Hey lady, we have two other TV's, watch your Kardashians all you like.  Of course, there are games every day and night the next couple of weeks except for Christmas Day. 


-Tonight, the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl with Utah taking on Boise State. Man, did Boise State get screwed over.  They go from being in the national title hunt to the Maaco Las Vegas bowl with one loss, to a good team too.  Some Utah players are trash talking already so maybe they'll also have a dance fight.