Hlas: Outback Bowl’s meaning is in (Hawk)eyes of beholder

TAMPA, Fla. — This college football bowl season's primary topic is the meaningfulness of those bowls.

Not the three playoff games, mind you, but just about everything else. You know, the games LSU's Leonard Fournette and Stanford's Christian McCaffrey skipped. And other bowls, showcasing teams with exotic won-lost records like 6-6 and 6-7 and even 5-7.

When some people claimed many of those bowls were meaningless, coaches and others lined up to take righteous umbrage.

'As a college coach, I think all of us have experienced when you play in bowl games, that is an important thing,' Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said last month. 'It's really important to the participants, and I think it's true of all games. … It's really been no different at any level, if you line up and play, games are important.'

Which, of course, is true. We saw one poorly attended third-tier and fourth-tier bowl after another feature plenty of passion from the participants. Plenty of Gatorade was dumped on coaches' heads by players who found significance and joy in their victories.

Fortunately, Kansas State's players didn't give Bill Snyder the icy Gatorade treatment after they won the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl. Snyder is old, for one thing. For another, I thought AdvoCare V100 might be a rocket ship or something cool.

Instead, it's a synergistic combination of vitamins and minerals to help supply the body with the nutritional components it needs to maintain optimal health. At the risk of incurring a lawsuit, it sounds dreadful. I should probably buy some.

Anyhow, there never was an outpouring of people suggesting the players didn't care about the lesser bowls. It was just that they lacked deep significance. Could Fournette and McCaffrey really be blamed for avoiding a risk of injury in a Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl or a Sun Bowl? They had NFL futures to protect and had already been injured during the season.

Iowa's players want to conquer Florida in Monday's Outback Bowl. For months, they've publicly admitted one of their goals is to win a bowl game. None have done so.

'It's tough,' Hawkeyes quarterback C.J. Beathard said here last week, 'especially being in my fifth year not having a win in a bowl game. It's tough. That's why we made it such a priority this year to win one.'

The Hawkeyes and their coaches crave the taste of closing the season with a triumph. They've lost their last four bowls, and haven't won one since December 2010. Their last two season-enders were king-size defeats.

'I think winning this Outback Bowl would mean more than any other bowl games combined,' Beathard said, 'because we did win.'

That's a perfectly understandable attitude. In fact, it's one you'd want and expect from your player. But it doesn't change the fact the Outback is just another bowl game.

It doesn't resonate across the country. Its primary purpose is to promote coconut shrimp and Bloomin' Onions, not prove anything football-wise.

This isn't a Rose Bowl, and everyone knows it. Hey, if going to Pasadena were easy, everybody would do it every year.

Iowa has been in four previous Outback Bowls. None made college football lore. But each meant a lot to the winning teams, and each loser was stung. However, ESPN has yet to create a 30 For 30 called 'Outback Bowl: The Greatest Game Ever Named After a Steakhouse Franchise.'

Florida won its division, but was slotted below fourth in the SEC's bowl pecking order. Iowa is the No. 5 Big Ten team. That's what this is: SEC No. 4 vs. Big Ten No. 5.

But everybody on the two teams is present, they all seem to want to win the thing, and what the heck. Maybe somehow, some way, lore will be made after all.

Michigan State, Notre Dame, Oregon and Texas didn't even get to an AdvoCare V100 bowl, let alone an AdvoCare V25 or V50. Would they trade places with Iowa Monday? Absolutely.

They might rather trade places with USC, Penn State, Oklahoma and Auburn Monday, since those teams are playing in Rose or Sugar bowls. But that's their problem, not Iowa's.