Bowls: There are a lot of them. As a public service, the Doc is here to rank each game according to five crucial criteria, with help from the patron saint of the game in question. Today: The Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl! Teams. Boston College Eagles (7-5) vs. Nevada Wolf Pack (11-1).
Particulars. Nevada (–7½)
Patron Saint: Activist turned actor Peter Coyote (born Rachmil Pinchus Ben Mosha Cohon), one of the founders of the Diggers, a radical theater troupe that fed and otherwise supplied thousands of mostly destitute people that flocked to San Francisco in the mid-to-late sixties through two free stores in the Haight-Ashbury district. Over the last decade, Coyote has narrated films for National Geographic, PBS and the NFL, and has acted in dozens of movies and television shows since the eighties, including E.T., Erin Brockovich and Dr. Doolittle: Tail to the Chief, in which he plays the U.S. president. He currently has a recurring role on Law & Order: Los Angeles, as the district attorney.
• Locale. AT&T Park, neé Pac Bell Park, is a baseball stadium, so bring on the odd dimensions: The corner of one end zone encroaches onto the warning track, dangerously near the left field wall, and both teams are lined up on the same sideline in right field, where a set of portable bleachers is the only thing keeping a badly shanked punt from potentially winding up in McCovey Cove. After the Big Ten's debacle in Wrigley Field in November, though, just getting a full-sized football field inside the stadium at all seems like an accomplishment.
• Dec. 17: New Mexico Bowl
• Dec. 18: Humanitarian Bowl
• Dec. 18: New Orleans Bowl
• Dec. 21: Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl
• Dec. 22: Maaco Bowl Las Vegas
• Dec. 23: Poinsettia Bowl
• Dec. 24: Hawaii Bowl
• Dec. 26: Little Caesars Bowl
• Dec. 27: Independence Bowl
• Dec. 28: Champs Sports Bowl
• Dec. 29: Texas Bowl
• Dec. 29: Alamo Bowl
• Dec. 30: Pinstripe Bowl
• Dec. 30: Music City Bowl
• Dec. 30: Holiday Bowl
• Dec. 31: Sun Bowl
• Dec. 31: Liberty Bowl
• Dec. 31: Chick-Fil-A Bowl
• Jan. 6: GoDaddy.com Bowl
• Tradition. Boston College, oddly enough, is the only team to appear in the San Francisco/Emerald/Fight Hunger Bowl more than once, making the cross-country trip for the third time in the bowl's nine-year existence. None of those games was decided by less than seven points or on any sort of rousing finish, but the game was host to the most time-consuming drive in college football history, 26-play, 95-yard march by Navy that took 14 minutes, 29 seconds off the clock in the third and fourth quarters of the Midshipmen's 34-19 win over New Mexico in 2004. The Eagles are carrying a battered conference banner: With last year's loss to USC, ACC has lost three straight and four of five in San Fran since accepting the tie-in in 2005.
• Swag. With the exception of a $100 Levi's gift certificate– the jeans giant originated as a makeshift supplier to the original Forty-Niners of the San Francisco Gold Rush – players aren't coming away with anything you haven't seen in this space before. But by providing a gift in each major swag category (headphones, a watch, a cap, a backpack), at least they're coming away with some variety.
• Sponsors, trophies and other ambiance. The NCAA rejected the applications of two new bowl games this offseason whose proceeds would have significantly aided humanitarian causes, the Cure Bowl (which would have benefitted breast cancer research) and the Christmas Bowl (to benefit the Children's Miracle Network), leaving the Fight Hunger as the postseason's only explicitly feel-good operation. The game is the culmination of a months-long hunger initiative between Kraft Foods and Feeding America, a hunger-relief charity that claims to feed more than 37 million Americans each year. By its own count, the "Huddle to Fight Hunger" has helped provide more than 20 million meals to Feeding America over the course of the 2010 season.
• This year's match-up. The game is hosting its first ranked team and first conference champion in Nevada, which staked its claim to one-third of the WAC title on the strength of a prolific attack that finished third nationally in rushing and second in total offense. The Wolf Pack can do fireworks: They hung 52 points on Cal in their only game against a "Big Six" opponent in September, and closed the year by averaging 46 points over the course of a six-game winning streak – including a 34-point night in the dramatic late-November upset over fellow WAC overlord Boise State, the most anyone scored against the Broncos all season.
Boston College lives on the opposite end of the spectrum: The Eagles never settled on a starting quarterback and limped in dead last in the ACC in scoring offense, having failed to score more than 26 points against any I-A/FBS opponent and been held below 20 in six of eight conference games. After dropping five straight to eventual bowl teams in September and October, though, the B.C. defense turned in a dominant effort down the stretch en route to five straight wins. By the end of the year, the Eagles had the No. 1 total defense in the ACC and the No. 1 rushing defense in the nation.
• Star power. Accordingly, Nevada is anchored by its insanely productive offensive headliners, quarterback Colin Kaepernick and running back Vai Taua, seniors who have combined for more than 8,600 yards rushing on six 1,000-yard seasons. With 2,715 yards in 2010, Kaepernick and Taua formed the nation's most productive 1-2 punch on the ground for the second year in a row – at the same time that Kaepernick was also passing the 10,000-yard passing mark for his career.
They're taking those gaudy numbers right into the teeth of arguably the nation's best 1-2 punch at linebacker, with some gaudy accolades of their own: Sophomore Luke Kuechly landed on every All-America team after leading the nation in solo and total tackles by a mile, alongside former All-American Mark Herzlich, who successfully returned from cancer to finish third on the team in stops without missing a game.
Final rating: out of five.
Maybe I'm feeling generous, but a late-night collision of one of the most explosive offenses in the country and one of the stingiest defenses, in a bizarre setting, for a good cause, strikes me as a perfectly fine way to close out the non-championship bowl season.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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