The sublime and the ridiculous

 Everything about America that is great and weird and brashly commercial happened a little before 8 p.m. last night, when a guy dressed as a Cinnamon Roll Pop-Tart disappeared slowly into the top of a giant fake toaster.

This symbolic sacrifice of a breakfast pastry ended when a giant, actual Cinnamon Roll Pop-Tart emerged from the bottom of the fake toaster, and a bunch of football players from Iowa State began stuffing their faces with it.

And thus the second Pop-Tarts Bowl was in the books, with Iowa State quarterback Rocco Brecht burrowing in from a foot away with 56 seconds to play to lift the Cyclones to a dramatic 42-41 win over that other meteorological event, the Miami Hurricanes.

"This is just silly," said my wife, watching various Pop-Tart mascots cavort around the field. 

"Ah, you have no soul," I teased, enjoying the greatest achievement yet in bowl-game marketing.

And, listen, people, it was. Last night, the sidelines were decorated with sprinkles. The goalposts were wrapped in Pop-Tart foil. One of the mascots even did a Pop-Tart striptease, bursting exuberantly (and nakedly, except for his frosting) from his foil wrapper. And the corpse or ghost or whatever of Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tart, last year's ritual sacrifice, appeared on top of the scoreboard at one point.

It was glorious. It was sublime. And, yes, also silly, bizarre and ridiculous.

But no more ridiculous, it must be said, than the game itself -- or at least one aspect of it.

This happened when Miami quarterback Cam Ward, a Heisman Trophy finalist, sat out the second half after throwing three touchdown passes in the first half. The three sixes put him at 156 for his career, one more than the D-I record set by Case Keenum of Houston between 2007 and 2011.

Mission thus accomplished, he then retired to the sideline by pre-arrangement to watch his team lose.

In the postgame Miami coach Mario Cristobal refused to say why this was so, possibly because the only thing more ridiculous than seeing Ward on the sideline as his team desperately tried for the last-minute win was trying to explain it.  But it seems fairly obvious: Ward is a virtual lock as a top-ten (or top-five) pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, and he wasn't going to risk injury trying to win even so prestigious an event as the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

And yet ...

And yet the sight of a Heisman finalist staying in the game only long enough to achieve a personal record did not, shall we say, have universal appeal. Nor should it have.

I'm sure Cinnamon Roll Pop-Tart, far nobler in his sacrifice, would agree.