I've covered a lot of bowl games for the Gazette. Two-hundred and seventy-four, to be exact, though I may have counted one of the Sun Bowls twice. You try spending a week in El Paso some late December.
Some are unforgettable, like the 2002 Orange Bowl. Miami Beach, as Jackie Gleason told us, is the sun and fun capital of the world. Gleason was right. The Iowa-USC game in Miami turned out to be a giant dud, but there are far worse places to be stationed for a week in the line of duty. El Paso comes to mind. Plus, I got to interview both O.J. Simpson and Dave Barry, one of whom never committed murder.
The Drew Tate-to-Warren Holloway Capital One Bowl miracle (isn't it funny how totally blown coverages can make miracles possible?) sticks out, also. It was newsworthy enough to make up for the horrors of having to actually step foot on the grounds of Disney World to follow around the Hawkeyes for nothing more than a photo opportunity. Some people think of nothing but the Kafka-esque nightmares that are theme parks when they think of Orlando. Me, I'll always remember the store between the media hotel and the Florida Citrus Bowl that sold baby goats.
Other past bowls fade from the memory quickly. Like last season's Outback Bowl. It seems to me there was some hue and cry about a phantom offsides call on an Iowa onsides kick or something like that, but the details are sketchy. I do remember standing on a fishing pier almost a quarter-mile into the Gulf of Mexico on that trip, and looking back at Clearwater Beach. There, the Iowa marching band was performing their music on the sand. Thankfully, I have no idea what an acid trip is like. But I'm guessing that experience was close. At least it wasn't Disney World.
This is my fourth Alamo Bowl, which coincidentally, is the same number of Alamo Bowls for Iowa's football team. In 1993, California's players made the Riverwalk theirs. They downed 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor in a popular Riverwalk night spot. They shot pool. They didn't seem to have anything resembling a curfew. They attended an NBA game in the Alamodome and reportedly ran amok on one of the suites there. They didn't take the game or their opponent very seriously. Probably because they knew what was coming, their 37-3 clocking of a woefully outmatched Iowa squad.
The Hawkeyes got Texas Tech for a foe in 1996 and 2001. The '96 game was a Hawkeyes rout. After the game in the Marriott Riverwalk bar, Iowa radio commentator Ed Podolak called a first-quarter Tim Dwight tackle of a Texas Tech punt-returner the defining moment of the game. Dwight, pretty good at punt-returns himself, absolutely blew up the poor Red Raider the instant he caught the punt. "You know how in roller derby they would call off the jam?" Podolak mused while nursing a martini. "Well, Texas Tech called off the jam right then."
In 2001, Iowa nipped Texas Tech, 19-16. I have no anecdotes about that trip. Blog items aren't supposed to go on forever, anyhow, so let's just end this here.