The obituary for bowl season may already be written.
But BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick isn’t reading it.
Never mind that Notre Dame, Iowa State and a host of other schools opted out of the postseason this year. The chance to play one more game — and end the year with a victory — still means something, Roderick argued this week as the Cougars prepared for the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
“People think that bowl games are meaningless or whatever,” Roderick said. “It’s not true, man. I still think bowl games are super important in college football because otherwise there’s only one team in the country that gets to end the season feeling good.
“There are just so many teams and there’s so much hard work that these guys put into what they do. And so I just really hope for our seniors that we go out and play well and let those guys get to experience winning one more time.”
The No. 12 Cougars take on No. 22 Georgia Tech on Saturday afternoon in Orlando, Florida. The game kicks off at 1:30 p.m. MT and will air on ESPN.
For BYU, it will be a chance for its first 12-win season since 2001, when Gary Crowton’s squad reeled off a dozen straight victories to claim the Mountain West title.
“To be able to do that as a senior, and with this team and with my brothers, that’ll be something super special and will go down in the history books,” wide receiver Chase Roberts said.
Senior linebacker Isaiah Glasker said he wanted one more win “really just to prove that we belong.”
“I feel like we didn’t get the opportunity we wanted to play in the playoffs,” he said, “and getting this 12th win hopefully can show what our team really can do.”
Roderick, meanwhile, put the game in context for the Cougars and their fans who have felt disappointed despite winning 11 games in consecutive campaigns.
“Our first year in the Big 12, we went 5-7. And we had some tough losses that year and some humbling losses where we really found out the hard way what it was going to take to compete at a high level in this conference,” he said. “And most of these seniors were part of that. And then to put in the work and then go back-to-back 11-2 seasons … getting to the championship game this year, you know, we came up a little short. But these guys deserve to go out the right way.”
