As another bowl season closes tonight with the national championship game in Tempe, Ariz., some of our ESPN analysts offer up their fondest bowl memories from their playing and coaching days:

Trev Alberts
One of the greatest motivating factors of all time came in the 1994 Orange Bowl when my Nebraska team played Florida State for the national championship. The Orange Bowl is wont to giving out commemorative jockstraps, and when we arrived for the game they were hanging in our lockers with the words "1994 National Championship Game" across the front of the waistband.

Later in the week, one of our managers somehow got his hands on the athletic supporter the FSU players received and brought it to me. Across the front it read "1994 National Champions". Granted, we were somehow 17 1/2-point underdogs, but the game hadn't been played yet!

As a team captain I called the rest of the players together and asked them to take out their jocks and read the front. I then stood in front of the team and held up the FSU version. Everyone was more than a little fired up.

We went out and dominated the game statistically, but not all the calls went our way and we lost when my roommate Byron Bennett missed a 45-yard field goal with no time remaining.

Bill Curry
As the head coach at Georgia Tech, I had to send several of my best offensive players home before we faced Michigan State in the 1985 All-American Bowl in Birmingham, Ala.

They were very strong leaders on the team and I was concerned about how they would react. At the next morning's practice I noticed linebackers Ted Roof and Pat Swilling talking, and when we finished the workout Roof requested a team meeting. I called the team together and said that I would leave.

Roof, one of our captains, said, "No, we want you to stay Coach. Some of us have been talking and we want you to know we love you, we know why you did what you did, and we are going to win the game."

They did, 17-14. I will never forget that group of men. We still get together annually, and needless to say, there is great respect and affection among us.

Jim Donnan
The 2000 Outback Bowl was one of the most exciting games I ever coached. Our Georgia team was down 25-0 in the second quarter against Purdue, but went on to stage the biggest comeback in bowl history. Randy McMichael caught a TD pass with just over 1:00 to go in regulation and we tied the game at 25, and after Purdue missed a field goal on its first possession of overtime, Hap Hines got a field goal on our first possession to win it.

The game kicked off at 11 a.m. and was billed as the first major sporting event of the millennium, and I told our players it was just too bad they thought the game started at 12:30.

Another postseason favorite of mine wasn't from a bowl game, but one of the best motivational tactics I ever used happened before a Division I-AA playoff game. We were playing Troy State at home in the 1993 I-AA semifinals, and before the game the TSU equipment manager asked our manager if the Trojans could store their gear at our place, where the championship game was to be played, rather than take it all the way home and ship it back the following week.

The insinuation that Troy State already had the semifinal won made our equipment manager angry and he told the story to me. I didn't like it much, either, and while our guys were watching a movie the night before the game our equipment staff went to work.

It replaced the nameplates on our lockers with TSU players and put a big "T" over the Marshall "M" that was at the center of our locker room.

I brought the players in after the movie and said, "Can you believe this? They're coming into our house and dressing in our lockers!"

We jumped to a 17-0 lead against the Trojans, allowing them just 12 plays in the final 20 minutes of a 24-21 win that got us to the championship game and sent Troy State home with all its equipment in tow.