by Matthew Zemek

Bowl season roundup

Bowl recaps and analysis:

EagleBank: Wake 29, Navy 19 | CFN
New Mexico: Colo. St. 40, Fresno St. 35
St. Petersburg: S. Florida 41, Memphis 14
Las Vegas: Arizona 31, BYU 21 | CFN
New Orleans: SMU 30, Troy 27 (OT) | CFN
Poinsettia: TCU 17, Boise St. 16 | CFN
Hawaii: Notre Dame 49, Hawaii 21 | CFN
Motor City: FAU 24, Cen. Mich. 21 | CFN
Meineke: W. Virginia 31, UNC 30 | CFN
Champs Sports: Fla. St. 42, Wis. 13 | CFN
Emerald: Cal 24, Miami 17 | CFN
Independence: La. Tech 17, NIU 10 | CFN
Papajohns.com: Rutgers 29, N.C. St. 23
Alamo: Mizzou 30, N'west. 23 (OT) | CFN
Humanitarian: Maryland 42, Nevada 35
Texas: Rice 38, W. Michigan 14
Holiday: Oregon 42, Oklahoma St. 31 | CFN
Armed Forces: Houston 34, Air Force 28
Sun: Oregon St. 3, Pittsburgh 0 | CFN
Music City: Vandy 16, BC 14 | CFN
Insight: Kansas 42, Minnesota 21
Chick-fil-A: LSU 38, Georgia Tech 3
Outback: Iowa 31, South Carolina 10 | CFN
Capital One: Georgia 24, MSU 12 | CFN
Gator: Nebraska 26, Clemson 21
Rose: USC 38, Penn St. 24 | Analysis
Orange: Va. Tech 20, Cincinnati 7
Cotton: Ole Miss 47, Texas Tech 34
Liberty: Kentucky 25, East Carolina 19
Sugar: Utah 31, Alabama 17
International: UConn 38, Buffalo 20
Fiesta: Texas 24, Ohio St. 21 | Analysis
GMAC: Tulsa 45, Ball St. 13
BCS title: Florida 24, Oklahoma 14
Complete bowl schedule

Photo gallery:

• Fiesta Bowl snapshots
• Snapshots from Saturday's bowls
• Best from bowl season's 1st weekend

Shopping:

• Get your '09 BCS bowl gear!

On a picture-perfect afternoon in the Carolinas, the winning team managed to walk off the field with humility and quiet relief, while the losing team managed to leave the stadium with an emboldened mind-set and a prouder gait. It was that kind of a day: Wake Forest might have prevailed on the next-to-last play of the game, an ice-veins 41-yard field goal by stud kicker Sam Swank, but the Rebels from Oxford, Miss., gained a lion's share of respect in the college football world.

Swank, quarterback Riley Skinner and coach Jim Grobe are all proven performers in their sport, tested titans of the Saturday afternoon wars that are staged every autumn. There was no disputing Wake Forest's credentials entering this contest, and the work of the Demon Deacons' tremendous trio — on placekicks, under center and between the headsets — is precisely what carried them to an exhilarating, last-second victory in one of Week 2's few enticing matchups. But while the home team deserves the laurels of victory, the team that stole the show was the visiting outfit from the Magnolia State.

Unlike Wake Forest, Ole Miss had a lot to prove coming into this interconference collision between the ACC and SEC. As the one SEC West program to never win so much as a division title (forget a conference crown) since the institution of divisional play in the SEC in 1992, the Rebels — eternally in search of a better, brighter future — brought a new coach and a new quarterback to the 2008 season, intent on making a new name for themselves. After the failed tenure of Ed Orgeron as coach, the guys from the Grove wanted to avoid "same 'ol, same 'ol," otherwise known as the same Ole Miss-ed opportunities that have dogged this program in the past. This duel with the Deacons represented the first big test of the Houston Nutt/Jevan Snead era, and as a result, it loomed large for the program made famous by Johnny Vaught in an era when none of the current UM players had been born.

As this game progressed and then careened toward its cluttered and clamorous climax, the Deacons were tested at every step by the Rebels, who displayed the guts and grit of a worthy player on the college football landscape. Snead had the moxie and magic needed to pull fourth-down conversions out of the fire. Nutt didn't over-coach the game, realizing that keeping the ball in his signal caller's hands represented the surest path to success. Everyone in a white shirt played hard, determined ball, standing strong in a number of red-zone situations and generally forcing Wake Forest to earn everything it received. Aside from fumbled punts by each team, both squads earned everything they claimed. And when Snead bought several extra seconds on a fourth and 2 from the Wake 5-yard-line with under 90 seconds remaining, the unyielding quarterback found running back Cordera Eason for the go-ahead score. The Rebels found themselves just a minute and change away from a significant road upset.

Yes, Skinner coolly led his mates downfield to set up Swank for the winning field goal, and yes, Wake Forest deserves a tremendous amount of credit for remaining free of panic in an early-season pressure cooker, but all in all, an account of this game isn't complete without an emphasis on the emergence of Ole Miss football for the first time since the end of the David Cutcliffe era. Even in defeat, the seeds of promise have been sown for the outfit from Oxford. Such is the storyline in the aftermath of a rousing and rip-roaring affair won by Wake Forest.