ESPN tried hard to hype this game. Because this game takes place a week before any others, it is hard to generate much excitement around it, especially when the teams in it are not very exciting themselves. Even the fans didn't show up for this one. As I said in my bowl prediction, this was essentially a home game for Southern Mississippi. If you looked at the stands, this is exactly what it looked like too. Behind the Eagles' bench, the stands were filled with yellow shirts. On the North Texas side, there were a few green shirts here and there. Attendance was listed as almost 28,000. They may have sold that many tickets, but I can guarantee that many people didn't come through the gates.

To top it off, and what really upset me about the broadcast team, was the constant hyping of North Texas Freshman running back, Jamario Thomas. Yes, Thomas has a great season, and yes, he had a great average yards per game statistic, but he was not the leading rusher in the league as they kept referring to him as. He may have led in average yards rushing per game, but he did it in only 9 games this season and those were games in the SunBelt conference. In the season opener against Texas, he ran twice for -1 yard. In the game against Baylor, he ran for only 58 yards. He had some success against Colorado. Still, the team is feeding him the ball almost 40 times a game. If Adrian Peterson got the ball 40 times a game, even 30 times a game, he would have put up the same numbers. Don't refer to this guy as the league leading rusher just because of that statistic when someone else put up better numbers for the whole season overall on less carries.

The MRI got this one right, though in the end, was anyone really watching and does it really matter? This is just another case where there are too many bowl games to cater to too many 6-5 teams.