NASSAU, Bahamas — The 2017 Bahamas Bowl was just about as perfect an ending to a season that Ohio could have dreamt up.
A 41-6 win over UAB in the Bahamas is as good an ending as a Mid-American Conference team can think of. With a powering running game and dominant defense, it was a game teams can only dream of.
It was also perfect in the sense that you could look back and ask "What happened?"
The Bobcats were better than their 8-4, now 9-4, record indicated headed into the game. A loss against Purdue early in the season was ugly, but losses against Central Michigan, Akron and Buffalo are all games Ohio wants back — especially after it missed the MAC Championship Game by virtue of a tiebreaker (head-to-head loss) with Akron.
Then Ohio came to Nassau and beat UAB into the ground for four quarters. It started from the opening kick and ended as the Blazers made a frantic last gasp to score a touchdown as time expired, only to see their receiver buried by a swarm of Bobcats.
The same reaction can be given on Ohio's 38-10 beatdown of Toledo in early November, only to see a loss to Akron the following week.
The Bobcats said they were angry, that they had a chip on their shoulder headed into the bowl game. As they should have. One of the two best teams in the conference was left out of the conference title game, so the Bobcats had every right to be mad at themselves.
If Ohio had lost to Toledo and then beat Akron, the Bobcats would have spent the first weekend of December in Detroit instead of Athens.
Beat the worse team and lose to the better, you're in. Beat the better team and lose to the worse, you're out. Football is cruel like that.
Still, that shouldn't take away from the accomplishments of just the third-ever Ohio team to win a bowl game — the most lopsided bowl win at that.
Ohio will return four of five starting offensive linemen next year, plus its starting quarterback and running back. That's a good place to start for an offense that nearly averaged 40 points per game.
The defensive losses will hurt up front — Quentin Poling and Chad Moore being the most notable — but there's no reason to think that the Bobcats won't be around the top of the MAC East come next November. Maybe they'll win the right games this time.
Still, this Ohio senior class accomplished something that only two other senior classes had done in Ohio history. That's nothing to look down upon, even if the season didn't turn out the way the Bobcats had hoped.
“This is a defining moment in the history of Ohio football," redshirt senior Jake Pruehs said after the bowl win.
Pruehs isn't wrong.
Despite it all, the cyclical nature of football will take over once again. Spring football will come faster than anyone might think, and before long it'll be summer again.
This year, Ohio will have a bowl win to lean back on. And if the Bobcats can keep that anger that they had going into the Bahamas Bowl rolling into 2018?
Well, there's no point in speculating.
