I, for one, greatly appreciate college football’s bowl season. It’s the perfect way to celebrate some of the historic traditions of the sport while also enjoying the sport’s quirkiness that so many of us love. Oh, and it’s a way to watch a variety of teams from across the country that I normally may not have much time to get to watch.
There’s a lot of history with college football bowl games and some bowl games have more history than others. Take the Sun Bowl, for example. It’s the second oldest bowl game around. And that’s where the Washington Huskies are headed.
I also have a deep appreciation of El Paso, but that’s another story for another time.
Anyways, in the midst of the changing landscape of college football, it’s also encouraging to see prominent college football coaches speak out in favor of traditional elements of the game. Jedd Fisch, the head coach of the Huskies who is soon to lead his team against the Louisville Cardinals in the Sun Bowl, is someone who is doing just that.
Washington Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch shows support for bowl games in college football
While there are a lot of folks who kind of check out with bowls these days, that’s apparently not the case for Fisch and the Huskies.
“We are all in," Fisch stated in a press conference. “In the bowl world, I think that players should be rewarded for going to bowls, I think coaches should be rewarded for going to bowls.”
This is a big deal. These games are important. They matter. Or at least they should matter. That includes the teams that get to compete in them, the fanbases supporting those teams, and the local communities that host the bowl games.
“I think it is a very important part of this process, especially when you play a nine-game conference season, not an eight-game conference season or schedule,” Fisch said. “When you have to play in the Big Ten and you play games like we did at Penn State and at Oregon and at Indiana and at Iowa and neutral site game against our rival.”
And for a team like Washington, that had to get through a grueling schedule full of travel all over the country just to get to this point, competing in a bowl game seems like a pretty rewarding thing. Fisch seems to agree.
“For our team to be there, we're very grateful, we're very appreciative, and we're going to live it up,” Washington’s head coach said.
The Huskies and the Cardinals will meet up in the Sun Bowl on December 31 at 11 a.m. PT.