The Hawaii Bowl: South Florida Bulls (6-6) vs San Jose State Spartans (7-5)
Key Facts: Bowl games haven’t been particularly kind to San Jose State recently, the Spartans haven’t won one since 2015. Ken Niumatalolo to the rescue! He’s won 5 of his last 6 bowl appearances although they were at Navy with the triple option which is tough to prepare for, but there’s something to that many wins. South Florida’s recent history of making bowls isn’t consistent but they usually capitalize when they make it. The Bulls are 7-4 as a program in bowls and winners of 3 of their last 4 including a 45-0 win over Syracuse last season (the largest shutout win in the history of any bowl game.) Emmett Brown for San Jose State is in the portal so not sure if he will play, that hurts the Spartans. All indications early on are that Nick Nash could play and he will have a massive chip on his shoulder if he does. South Florida’s stud QB Byrum Brown got hurt on a late hit against the Miami Hurricanes early in the year, attempted to play against Tulane but aggravated it and hasn’t played since, with a weekly tweet from Brett McMurphy on GameDay that Brown won’t play yet again.
Previous Meetings: These programs have only met once! A 42-22 South Florida win in San Jose in 2017. I found it very curious that they only played the one game in San Jose. After some research (thank you FBSschedules.com) I found that the return game in Tampa kept getting pushed off and was recently cancelled. They couldn’t avoid each other for long!
Motivation Edge: Both teams are going to be excited to be here, a game in Hawaii is absolutely a great reward to end the year. This is a return trip for San Jose State who was here last year but this is a pretty new team and they were told all offseason they were going to regress so they’ll be motivated. This season didn’t go as expected for South Florida but they’ll be determined to finish strong.
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