Chick-Fil-A Bowl: Virginia Cavaliers vs. Auburn Tigers
The Chick-Fil-A Bowl has become one of the biggest spectacles of the bowl season, as it is always the last game to finish up before ringing in the new year. This year is no exception, as this late kickoff on New Year's Eve at the Georgia Dome should wrap up right around 11:00, just in time for those New Year's celebrations. This year, the Auburn Tigers, the defending BCS National Champions, will finish up their season by taking on the Virginia Cavaliers.
This is a fantastic reward for a Virginia team that absolutely deserves the accolades. The Cavvies came out of nowhere this year to finish in second in the ACC Coastal Division, and had they topped the Virginia Tech Hokies on the final Saturday of the regular season in the ACC, they would have taken on the Clemson Tigers in the ACC Championship Game.
This was a team that lost two heartbreaking games at the start of the year to the North Carolina Tar Heels and Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles, but after that, things really started to turn around. Virginia survived a challenge from a bad Idaho Vandals team, and it came out from there and beat teams like the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and Miami Hurricanes which it probably had no business winning. From there, the team pulled off its biggest triumph, knocking off the Florida State Seminoles in Tallahassee, which is why the Cavaliers are here and not the Noles.
Head Coach Gene Chizik deserves a heck of a lot of credit this year. The Tigers were coming off of a national championship, and they had lost really all of the pieces to the puzzle on both sides of the ball that really made things work. A drop off was expected, but a near defeat against the Utah State Aggies definitely wasn't in the cards in Week 1. However, the squad rallied and became a respectable team in the SEC West, a division which handed everyone three immediate losses to the LSU Tigers, Alabama Crimson Tide, and Arkansas Razorbacks.
The killer is that RB Michael Dyer, who rushed for over 1,200 yards this year and was one of the few cogs remaining from the title team, has been suspended for this game and won't make the trip to Atlanta.
However, in spite of that, Auburn is still favored by two points at the Georgia Dome, a place where it became very comfortable a year ago. 5Dimes Sportsbook in featuring a 'total' in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl of 49.
