Against all odds: We’re going bowling for the first time in five years

Apparently the St. Petersburg Bowl is a real thing, and we’re playing in it

If you’re a student at UConn, you have yet to experience post-season football, and for the most part, just the thought of playing more than 12 football games in a season has been a joke for the past few years.

They’ve been bad, boring to watch, and a running joke on campus. NOT ANYMORE! UConn football absolutely dominated this year and they storm in to the post-season for the first time in five years with expectations of greatness.

OK not really, we finished the season 6-6 with some quality wins and some equally poor losses. But nonetheless, UConn will be playing in a bowl game for the first time since 2010 when we lost to Oklahoma in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

If you’re not familiar with the college football bowl system, it’s not pretty. There finally is a four team playoff, which was a huge improvement for the sport, but the rest of the teams in the country, the entire season comes down to single games against random teams in a game sponsored by the weirdest company names you can think of.

This is the situation UConn finds themselves in, and for all Husky fans, this is something to be incredibly proud of. Like I said, the team has not been good, and a bowl game means this team is moving in the right direction and has a promising future under head coach Bob Diaco.

The St. Petersburg Bowl is a bowl game played every year between a team from the American Athletic Conference (the league of lovable losers we call home) and either the ACC or Conference USA. This year, UConn will face off against Marshall University, who finished in 2nd in Conference USA.

It will be played on December 26, 2015 in Tropicana Field, the stadium where the MLB Tampa Bay Rays play. Ask any baseball fan and they will tell you this stadium is a dump, but hey, I guess we can’t complain about where our bowl game is. You can watch the game on ESPN at 11am ET.

The Marshall University Thundering Herd (yes, that’s their mascot) are one of the many Division I football programs you only get the chance to see play in games like this. The small, West Virginia based school had a pretty good season, finishing 9-3 overall. I am in no position to analyze what this record means because of the teams they play, but nonetheless, they are a good football team and it should be fun to watch.

UConn has every reason to be excited and pumped up for this game, meaning they should come ready to play. It’s been a while since we’ve seen UConn football, but we all remember the feeling of beating then-undefeated Houston a few weeks ago at The Rent. A bowl win this year could provide us with the same type of energy and excitement for the future of our football team.

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