Thursday Bowl Game Open Thread: Mayo and Music and Peaches—Oh, Gross.

Types of Carolina barbecue sauce, ranked:

1. Light tomato
2. Vinegar
3. Heavy tomato
4. Eating plain, dry meat
5. Getting hit in the face with a frying pan
6. Getting a Duke’s Mayo Bowl mayo bath
7. Mustard
8. Whatever the hell “rust gravy” is

Onto the games.

Duke’s Mayo Bowl

North Carolina Tar Heels vs. South Carolina Gamecocks

10:30am | ESPN | UNC -9.5 | O/U 57

Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte, NC)

From the UNC football Wikipedia page:

PROMINENCE IN THE NFL! MITCH TRUBISKY!

“Yes, Wikipedia—Chicago Bears fans on line 1.”

Woof, indeed.

Kind of...: MNW is a busy man, so he can be forgiven for forgetting OTE’s contractual obligations whenever South Carolina comes up:

Gaylord Hotels Grinnin’ Glen Mason Memorial Music City Bowl

Tennessee Volunteers vs. Purdue Boilermakers

2pm | ESPN | Tennessee -5.5 | O/U 64.5

Nissan Stadium (Nashville, TN)

Take it away, BoilerUp:

Neither Iowa nor Northwestern fans can think about bowl games against Tennessee in recent memory; similarly, we’re pretty sure this is the first time Purdue’s ever played at the Music City Bowl.

[Kind of...: Really old Iowa fans can point to the 1982 Peach Bowl, where Iowa beat Tennessee 28-22, largely holding WR Willie Gault in check and overcoming a big day from Vol DE Reggie White. Not quite so old Northwestern fans probably don’t want to point to a second Volunteer blowout of the Wildcats in the 1997 Citrus bowl where Peyton Manning had 400 yards passing and 4 TDs. Boy, Tennessee used to be really good, huh?]

Any further questions? No? Good.

Peach Bowl

#12 Pittsburgh Panthers vs. #10 Michigan State Spartans

6pm | ESPN | MSU -2.5 | O/U 56

Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta, GA)

I love when we have teams playing and we both can do less work. From Green Akers:

Pitt has played exactly two bowl games against the Big Ten and lost both:

• The 1984 Fiesta Bowl to Ohio State, where the Foge Fazio-coached Panthers blew a late lead to Mike Tomczak and the Buckeyes. I only know Fazio as DC of the Minnesota Vikings for some of the good years, so I’ll let Kind of... tell you more about this one.
• Kind of...Already referenced it earlier this year. It was a really entertaining game back when the Fiesta was the upstart 5th Jan. 1 bowl game, and when the Sugar and Orange basically went head-to-head.

• The 2016 Pinstripe Bowl to Northwestern, which we talked about at more length yesterday. That game was fun.

SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl

wisconsin badgers vs. Arizona State Sun Devils

9:30pm | ESPN | wisc -6 | O/U 41

Allegiant Stadium (Las Vegas, NV)

Kind of... did the heavy lifting on this one as he clearly works through something:

BUT FOR THE REST OF US, IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE:

I forgot how ridiculous that whole sequence was, but it’s a joy to watch it over again.

Doing the bare minimum of research that is my custom for this “series” of bowl previews, I remembered that not only was this bowl once sponsored by Royal Purple, apparently a synthetic oil brand, and MAACO, but learned that it had been sponsored by both EA Sports and Sega.

HOWEVER, what I didn’t know at all was that this was the effective successor to the California Raisin Bowl, hosted in Fresno from 1981-1991. When Fresno State left the Big West to move to the glorious creature that was the WAC, the bowl sponsors pulled out and the Big West and MAC pulled their Raisin Bowl tie-ins for the newly-formed Las Vegas Bowl.

This is the first-ever appearance by a Big Ten team in Vegas, and we couldn’t have send a more accurate representation of the Midwest. I can only hope the badgers took an Allegiant Airlines flight from Appleton-Green Bay Airport or Rockford-Chicago International Airport—and I’m not sure which is the more hilariously-named airport.

This is your thread for the day’s football. Don’t burn the place down.