You’re never quite sure what to expect in a bowl game. A team and a coaching staff gets a month-plus to scout and gameplan and practice, sure, but that also means a month that the team is out of action. Players have time to recover from major and minor injuries, but they also have time to decide that maybe a bowl game isn’t in their best interest.
Sometimes a bowl game can be a pleasant surprise, a chance for redemption after a season that didn’t go quite as expected. Sometimes a team that has been consistently good will show up and look entirely discombobulated.
Sometimes, a team can show in only a few plays the recurring themes of the entire season, as was the case for Penn State late in the first half of Saturday’s deflating loss to Arkansas in the Outback Bowl.
