A Pop-Tarts champion is crowned, breathing life into bowl season
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Good morning! I hope you’re not playing against Derrick Henry in your fantasy football championship. Coming up:
- 😋 Pop-Tarts!
- 🏈 The NFL playoff picture
- ⚾ Strange baseball moments, Part 2
Bowls: BYU toasts Georgia Tech, becomes people’s national champ
Yesterday was, volume-wise, the biggest day of the postseason in major college football. There were eight nationally televised bowl games, highlighted by the one that has become the standard-bearer for bowls outside of the College Football Playoff ecosystem:
College football’s Orlando-based bowl game took on the Pop-Tarts Bowl label in 2023. It has already become the rhetorical go-to for anyone who needs a shorthand for meaningless bowl exhibitions. When Ole Miss coach Pete Golding was asked about the challenge of keeping the Rebels focused after Lane Kiffin left, he said it was no problem because this was the Playoff and not the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Congrats to the Pop-Tarts people on claiming this mantle! It’s good marketing!
It’s now a common refrain that non-Playoff bowls don’t matter. Player and coach opt-outs (even whole-team opt-outs, in fact) have watered them down a good bit. Per-game attendance is lower than it was 25 years ago, while the number of bowl games has almost doubled in that span. In fact, as far back as 2000, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was telling reporters that the existence of the BCS Championship (est. 1998) had created a “hangover” for other bowl attendance. These conversations about the state of the bowls are not new.
But if people vote with their remote controls, then non-Playoff bowls are still a huge deal. TV ratings have been huge in recent years. When numbers for this weekend come out, they will probably be big again. As long as that’s true, bowls will never die.
I guess I’m not helping the case by waiting this long to tell you who played in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. Final score: No. 12 BYU 25, No. 22 Georgia Tech 21. The Cougars overcame a 21-10 fourth-quarter deficit and sealed it on an interception of Haynes King in the end zone. (A shame for King’s excellent college career to end that way, but alas.) BYU claims another mantle here, too: The Cougars are the non-Playoff national champions of 2025.
Notre Dame decided not to play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl out of disappointment and fury after being snubbed for the Playoff. The Irish could have gone out, won this game and pointed to their work as additional evidence that the selection committee screwed them by taking Alabama instead. But with Notre Dame passing on that chance, the lane was open for someone else.
This year had three ranked-versus-ranked matchups in non-Playoff bowls, but BYU entered with the highest ranking of any participant at No. 12. The Pop-Tarts Bowl just feels right as the place to crown the Snubbed National Champ, whose fans can now spend the offseason insisting that things would’ve gone down differently if their team were allowed in the Playoff.
Congrats to the Cougars. Personally, I would hang the banner.
News to Know
NFL playoff picture taking shape
Plenty of other games today will have a significant impact on the NFL playoff picture, but multiple dominoes already fell last night. Quickly:
- The Texans secured their spot in the postseason thanks to a 20-16 win over the Chargers, which simultaneously clinched the Broncos’ first AFC West title in a decade and bounced the Colts. I’m not sure anyone in the AFC wants to see this Houston defense in the playoffs.
- The Ravens, meanwhile, are still alive for the final AFC playoff spot thanks to Derrick Henry’s monster game. Baltimore now has an 18 percent chance to make the playoffs, per , which is at least better than the 0 percent it would have been with a loss.
The Ravens’ win over the Packers also wrapped up the NFC North titlefor the Bears. Certainly can’t complain about clinching the division from your couch.
Izzo rips NCAA
Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo had strong words for the NCAA yesterday after it granted James Nnaji four years of eligibility despite Nnaji having been drafted by an NBA team. The 21-year-old Nnaji — who was picked 31st by the Pistons in the 2023 NBA Draft — reportedly committed to Baylor earlier this week and could suit up for the Bears as early as next week. Izzo is certainly not alone in his criticism of the situation. Read his full comments.
More news:
- In related news, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s lawyer cited the Nnaji case in a court filing this weekend related to Pavia’s eligibility lawsuit against the NCAA. College sports today in a nutshell.
- Team USA beat Switzerland at the World Juniors yesterday, but lost a standout defenseman to a frightening injury in the process. Full takeaways from Day 2 here.
- Pelicans guard Jose Alvarado (6 feet) and Suns center Mark Williams (7 feet 1) traded punches yesterday in an on-court altercation. Talk about a reach advantage.
Watch Guide
Week 17 in the NFL will dominate the sports calendar today. Full slate here.
📺 NFL: Eagles at Bills
4:25 p.m. ET on Fox
The Bills are a game back of the Patriots in the AFC East but can keep up the pressure with a win. (New England plays the Jets in the early window but wouldn’t clinch the division today unless the Bills lose.) The Eagles are jostling for NFC seeding.
📺 NFL: Bears at 49ers
8:20 p.m. ET on NBC
Chicago is still in the race for the No. 1 seed in the NFC, a spot for which San Francisco controls its own destiny. There is a world in which the 49ers play five straight home games all the way through the Super Bowl.
Pulse Picks
Jayson Stark is back with another classic: MLB’s weirdest injuries of 2025. Click.
I’ve never been able to commit to full-fledged journaling, but I do have time for a quick couple of sentences. That’s the magic of this Pendleton One Line A Day memory book, received just in time to record a few sweet holiday vignettes. — Alex Iniguez
Alex Rodriguez is at peace with the fact that he’s not in the Hall of Fame, and he largely has therapy to thank for that.
If you have an 8-year-old (and younger) taking on Madden for the first time, set it to Rookie. Reduce meltdowns by 8,000 percent, guaranteed. — Chris Sprow
With the NHL’s holiday freeze over and the trade deadline just over two months away, our NHL staff picked one target from the trade board for each team.
The new “Knives Out” was really fun! Josh O’Connor is on a different level. It’s like every other actor is performing in a stylish little whodunit caper and meanwhile, O’Connor was like, “I am going to give a performance so powerful it will heal generational religious trauma.” — Hannah Vanbiber
Stewart Mandel spoke with stakeholders across college athletics to find out if the revenue sharing cap and NIL oversight have actually reined in college football spending. The answer seems to be a resounding “no.”
I don’t drink alcohol, but I’m very serious about special little drinks. I, alongside my colleagues on Wirecutter’s kitchen team, taste-tested several dozen nonalcoholic drinks to find these chic, dinner-party-worthy tipples — each as nuanced and compelling as their alcoholic counterparts. — Mace Dent Johnson
ICYMI, re-upping this fun one from early last week: Why horses turn Nikola Jokić from an NBA MVP into a “stable boy.”
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Part 1 of Jayson Stark’s Strange But True series.
Most-read on the website yesterday: Colleges are already ignoring the spending cap. Shocking.
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(Top photo: Kim Klement Neitzel / Imagn Images)