“Playoffs? Don’t talk about playoffs. You kiddin’ me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game.” – former Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Mora

 By the time you read this, you will already know my fate.

OK, that was probably a little too dramatic of a lede. This is a column about a college football bowl game.

However, stakes are higher than usual at the casa de Fincher this week.

Many of you may know my allegiance lies with the navy-and-orange-clad college team of this state, but some of you may not know I also have a degree from Jacksonville State University. My mother managed to snag two degrees from the college nestled in the gem of the hills that is Jacksonville, Alabama.

So, I always try to pull for dear ole Jax State whenever I can. That allegiance was never truly tested – that is until this week.

My Gamecocks are taking on my wife, Lara’s, Troy University Trojans in this week’s IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl being played in beautiful-ish Cramton Bowl in downtown Montgomery.

Lara pulls hard for her Trojans. She got both her college degrees from Troy, though she likes to tell people she actually got her degrees from two different universities as Troy University made the transition from Troy State University in the short time between her graduation ceremonies.

If you are not of a certain age, you may not know Jax State and Troy were long-time football rivals, and they faced off in the Battle for the Ol’ School Bell more than 60 times. The name harkens back to both schools’ roots in training educators.

Unfortunately, the rivalry was lost after Troy moved up in weight class to what we now call the Football Bowl Subdivision, or FBS, while Jax State remained behind in the Football Championship Subdivision.

These two teams last scrimmaged way back in 2001. Troy got to walk away with bragging rights, winning 21-3, before the iron curtain was drawn closed between the schools. In spite of the most recent result, I like to point out Jax State still holds the overall lead in wins in the series.

Jax State eventually made the big leap to the FBS in 2023, setting the two universities’ sports programs back on a level playing ground. Despite this promising development, the two schools have not yet scheduled to meet each other on the gridiron.

Probably the best explanation for this is the schools belong to different athletic conferences – Troy, the Sun Belt, and Jax State, Conference USA – which adds a degree of difficulty in finding an agreeable date for a game.

But this is not an impossibly high hurdle to clear as all conferences offer their teams several weeks to schedule games against teams from outside the conference. Seems to me that resurrecting this slugfest on an annual basis would be a win-win for both camps, but the powers that be steadfastly refuse to appoint me as czar of college athletics.

So, for now, we are left with this one-off matchup in a postseason bowl game.

Over the past couple of weeks, much of the sports talk I have heard has been about expanding the number of teams invited to the playoff and how bowls have become an outdated concept.

I hear about how players have so much to lose and so little to gain by participating in what are essentially glorified exhibitions played to offer ESPN cheap programming while providing local chambers of commerce the chance to fill a few empty hotel rooms.

That all can be true, but it can also be true that some of these bowl games are meaningful. Maybe there are not many, but I know of at least one meaningful bowl game being played this season.

It would be a shame for Troy and Jax State, who both lost their respective conference championship games, not to get one more shot at redemption against an ancient rival to close out the season only because of a perceived lull in interest in bowl games.

I imagine Cramton Bowl would be filled to the brim if ESPN had not scheduled this game for 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night. The worldwide leader in sports apparently does not know or does not care that people have jobs to go to on Wednesday mornings.

This brings me back around to the beginning. The deadline for my column falls before the game’s kickoff, so you either know or can easily find out which spouse is rubbing the other’s nose in it this week. Either way, whup Troy, you AKCs.