But even worse than the bad performance blowout loss is the “total and complete blowout,” also known as the “your team just got the crap kicked out of it” loss or the “Hawai’I Sugar Bowl 2008” loss. Hawai'I was the underdog, they thought they had moxie, and that dream was destroyed. They and their fans felt that kick in the gut when they sat down in their cars after the game was over or when they snapped the TV off; they realize they’re gonna have to wait till next year for any shot at redemption. They thought they had a fighting chance against Georgia, and they got embarrassed. All the naysayers were right. That sucks, hard - and the Illinois fans know it too. There’s not many feelings worse than that.

But the worst feeling of all is the upset blowout loss. The underdog has a banner day, your team just goes to pieces, and somewhere in the middle of the game, the commentators start consoling fans of the losing team instead of the team they should have been consoling. That's the feeling that OU fans have after the Fiesta Bowl loss. There was no reason for OU to go in there and get humiliated, but somehow, they managed to pull off a fourth straight BCS game loss. It’s embarrassing to the nth degree, because West Virginia not only gets to be the David, they got promoted to Goliath after the win. OU just gets to lick its wounds. It’s not something you live down easily. Columnists write columns trying to figure out what happened, players say things that don't make any sense, fans try to avoid sports for a couple of days - it's just a messy, terrible situation. It's easily the worst way to lose a game, if only because people are really annoying when they say "Pride goes before a fall."

Be ye fan or player, getting upset and blown out in the same game is equivalent to being fired and thrown out of your house on the same day – there’s just nothing good about it. You go home and you sit and you sit some more. Maybe you do something to take your mind off it, but your heart’s just not in it. Your sports-loving soul is an inflatable stabbed with a kitchen knife when you get upended that badly, and that’s not something that heals easily.

The thrill of victory is surrounding 30 teams by now - only two bowl games are left. But don’t remind the fans of the other 30 teams about the thrill of victory. Let us just mope in our agony. That's really the only response that losing a bowl game elicits. No matter how the game is lost, the agony of defeat is mighty.