2009 Gator Bowl
Nebraska 26 ... Clemson 21
GAME
RECAP: Nebraska rallies for the win
- 2009 CFN Gator Bowl
Preview
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2009 Gator Bowl
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1. Bo Pelini
still has ground to make up in
the Big 12, but a
come-from-behind victory on New
Year’s Day is a gigantic step in
the right direction. After
missing the postseason a year
ago, the Huskers needed to show
the rest of the nation that it
was making progress in Pelini’s
debut. Mission accomplished for
a program that’s been known to
recruit well outside of the
region. There were even glimpses
of the old Blackshirts, getting
to Cullen Harper five times and
limiting the tandem of James
Davis and C.J. Spiller to just
43 yards rushing on 19 carries.
It’s a start. A good start. -
Richard Cirminiello
2. For all of you playoff
proponents out there, this Gator
Bowl is your slam-dunk argument
as to why you can have your cake
and eat it too. This was a great
game, a fun game, stuck in the
glut of the New Year's Day A.M.
that included the Capital One
Bowl, the Outback, the NHL thing
in Wrigley, and overlapped with
the start time of the Rose Bowl,
and it was still a well attended
event and it was still worth the
watch. Everyone tries to make
the bowl season out to be an
either-or situation. Either you
have a playoff and eliminate the
bowls, or you have to keep
things as is. You can still have
bigger, better bowls that
everyone will care about, 99.9%
of all college football fans
outside of Lincoln and Clemson
would rather watch the Rose Bowl
than the Gator, yet you can
still have the other bowls (and
most would rather watch this
year's Gator again than the
Rose). Explain, exactly, why
there can't be an eight team
playoff and still have a
Gator Bowl between name-brand
teams like Nebraska and Clemson
in a meaningful battle that will
get college football fans
buzzing. This just in, all
bowl games outside of the
BCS Championship Game don't
really matter in the overall
scheme of life. That doesn't
mean they're not fun and they
shouldn't be abolished. Keep the
big games everyone wants to see,
the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and
Sugar, for an eight team
playoff, and then there will
still be a nice trickle down
effect with great games for the
other bowls to put together.
-
Pete
Fiutak
3. Ndamukong Suh. As tough to
pronounce as he is to block. The
junior defensive tackle has
already announced that he plans
to be back in Lincoln in 2009,
which is terrific news for the
Husker program. In one of the
most impressive performances by
an interior lineman in the bowl
season, he led Nebraska with
eight tackles, four tackles for
loss, two sacks, and a blocked
kick. Built like a prototypical
tackle, he moves like an end,
which was too much for a Clemson
offensive line that had trouble
in pass protection throughout
the year. Run around Suh? Few
opponents were able to do it
this season.
-
Richard Cirminiello
4.
The aftermath of a bowl game is
a very good time to assess
conferences, programs, and NFL
draft prospects for top players.
Sometimes, though--even in a
second-tier bowl such as this
one--a great play stands out so
much that it has to take top
billing. One of those plays
occurred in this game, as a
dramatic mano-a-mano showdown
played a big part in deciding
the outcome in Jacksonville.
Down by only five points with
1:43 left, and facing
second-and-goal from the
Nebraska 10, Clemson was
oh-so-close to taking the lead.
Tiger quarterback Cullen Harper
had just converted a
fourth-and-4 to keep his teams
hopes alive, but he'd have to
make one more big play to carry
his team over the top. He rolled
right as he was flushed out of
the pocket on this significant
second-down snap. Blitzing
Husker cornerback Eric Hagg
found an angle, but it still
seemed that Harper would at
least be able to buy enough time
to throw the ball away and fight
for another down. Hagg got a
hold of Harper's ankle, but
nothing more. Usually,
quarterbacks or other ball
carriers are able to shake
loose. But something inside
Hagg's body wouldn't allow him
to let go. He found enough
leverage to spin Harper to the
turf for a 16-yard loss to the
26. In one dramatic moment, the
kind of snapshot that's worth a
portrait (like Alabama's Barry
Krauss stopping Penn State's
Mike Guman at the goal line in
the 1979 Sugar Bowl), Eric
Hagg's defeat of Cullen Harper
enabled Nebraska to avenge a
loss to orange-clad Clemson in
the 1982 Orange Bowl.
-
Matthew
Zemek
5. The most controversial replay
call of this game came when the
booth ruled that backup Nebraska
quarterback Patrick Witt did not
fumble midway through the fourth
quarter, a decision which
preserved the Huskers' two-point
lead at the time. The call was
debatable to a certain extent,
but it's worth making a key
point about the ruling, and the
way the play was examined.
The CBS production truck did a
nice job of using rewind and
fast-forward frames to help the
booth (ESPN could learn a lot
from the way CBS offered
review-friendly technology
today), but what the CBS crew
didn't quite do was identify the
precise moment when Witt's knee
hit the ground. The CBS truck
chose to freeze the frame at a
point when Witt's knee had
firmly hit the ground, but not
at the point when Witt's knee
originally touched the
ground. That might seem like a
fine distinction, but that's
precisely the point. The
bang-bang call was so close, and
so important to the game's
outcome, that such nitpicking
was necessary. If the CBS truck
had frozen the frame just a
split-second earlier, when
Witt's knee initially touched
the turf, viewers would have
been able to see that the ball
had not begun to come loose.
The booth got it right.
CBS had good technology and good
production values.
Next time, though, a production
truck needs to identify the
moment when a knee begins to
touch the ground, not the moment
when a knee skids or bounces.
-
Matthew
Zemek