Saturday college football bowl games open thread

Greetings, Raider Nation! We’re getting ever closer to the important New Year’s Bowl games but today there are four mid-tier bowls going on, with some interesting matchups to watch.

Up first is the Jared Birmingham Bowl between the Memphis Tigers and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, which is the coolest name in all of college athletics. Wake Forest somehow got to six wins this year! Good for them, but Memphis will try to keep them from getting to seven.

After that it’s the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, between the Houston Cougars and the Army Golden Knights. Houston’s best player is defensive tackle Ed Oliver, who of course is not playing. Army will try to triple option them to death. If Army had used the triple option in 1943, Hitler would have surrendered in a matter of months due to the destruction of both ACLs. Lockheed Martin is a fascinating sponsor for a bowl game. Here is a short list of the products manufactured by Lockheed Martin, which reads like my Christmas list:

• Lockheed F-117 stealth ground attack aircraft.
• F-22 Raptor, stealth tactical fighter.
• F-16 Fighting Falcon, initially developed by General Dynamics.
• U-2 reconnaissance jet.
• C-5 Galaxy undergoing upgrade to Super Galaxy.
• C-130 Hercules tactical transport.

So clearly, their sponsorship of this bowl game is to appeal to the casual sports fan who is in the market for an F-117 stealth attack fighter. I mean, who isn’t?

Following that is the Dollar General Bowl between the Buffalo Bulls and the Troy Trojans. If there were ever two teams best represented by Dollar General, it would be these two, and maybe Missouri.

Finally we have the Hawai’i Bowl, which is on at 10:30 PM Eastern but will begin at 4:30 AM Hawai’i Time because unlike the little maps we have of America which show Hawai’i just south of Tijuana, Hawai’i is actually located in the South Pacific, which is on the other side of the planet. Nothing like watching a game at night in the States while the players watch a Hawai’ian sunrise! The teams are, get this, the Hawai’i Warriors and the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. Why can’t they ever send Hawai’i to Shreveport for a bowl game? Get them boys some culture, and maybe some gumbo too.