Some things in life are almost so funny and so opposite that they simply have to happen. That is the case here with the Iowa Hawkeyes drawing the Tennessee Volunteers in this year’s Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.
The Hawkeyes’ season has become a national storyline for its inability to move the ball offensively yet somehow they continued to win games by being even stingier on defense. Their opponent, the Volunteers, is the yin to Iowa’s yang.
Tennessee doesn’t want to play low-scoring, ugly, defensive fights. They want to play a game of seeing who can score 40 points first and hope they have the ball last with a chance to win.
This black-and-white difference has CBS Sports ranking this bowl game at No. 11 out of 41.
11. Citrus Bowl: No. 17 Iowa vs. No. 21 Tennessee
Monday, Jan. 1, 1 p.m. — I cannot stop chuckling at the absurdity of this matchup. On one side, we’ve got a Tennessee team that may not have been as potent offensively as the team we saw last year but still managed to score 31.5 points per game. Then there’s an Iowa team that usually needs a month to score 31.5 points. I’m only half joking! Iowa played three games in October and scored 45 points. And it finished the season with a 10-3 record! This game will be like an MMA fight between a fighter with all the coolest ninja moves going and wrestler simply trying to get you on the ground so they can sit on your face for the entire round. I have no idea who wins. Though, now that I think about it, I’d love to see an MMA fight between Tennessee’s Joe Milton and Iowa’s Deacon Hill. Hill’s got the weight advantage, but Milton’s got the reach. It’s anybody’s fight. – Tom Fornelli, CBS Sports
This contrast makes for a very intriguing matchup. It almost feels like a basketball game where one team wants to play defense and use the entire shot clock but their opponent wants to get off as many three-point attempts as possible.
Kickoff for the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl is 12:00 p.m. CT on Monday, Jan. 1 from Orlando, Florida. One way or another, this game is going to have one side forced to play a style they don’t want to, and that alone is enough to make this the perfect game to tune into before the College Football Playoff games take place that evening.
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