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The bowl season has barely begun, but it's difficult to imagine any game could be more entertaining than the Miami Beach Bowl.

Lots off offense, lots of momentum swings and an exciting finish as Memphis won 55-48 in double overtime.

But the lasting television images came from the postgame brawl — a fight that ESPN's Dave Flemming correctly called "ugly." That's what will be replayed as bowl season continues and beyond.

This story was not just confined to national sports shows and uncounted hundreds of local sportscasts. The fight made "Good Morning America," "The Today Show" and "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday — and BYU's Kai Nacua was prominently featured sucker punching a Memphis player.

What wasn't as clear was that Nacua had already been bloodied. And, in the grand scheme of things, Memphis' Chase Johnson swinging his helmet as a weapon — and connecting with BYU's Tejan Koroma — seems a more serious offense.

But there was better video of Nacua's sucker punch, so it got more play.

Even after looking at available video, it's not clear who's to blame for what happened. Who started it. Except that there is plenty of blame to go around.

Like it or not, though, the losing team is often assigned the greater portion of the blame no matter what the facts are. Perception is reality, whether the perception is accurate or not.

Given that BYU so often talks about its football program as a missionary tool, it's difficult to imagine how this could possibly be worse for the Cougars. These TV images will live on forever.

Insulting interview • ESPN devoted almost seven minutes of its Las Vegas Bowl coverage on Saturday to an interview that had nothing to do with the game and, quite frankly, insulted the intelligence of viewers.

With Utah leading 21-10 in the second quarter, Brent Musburger and Jesse Palmer interviewed former Colorado State/current Florida coach Jim McElwain. In the process, they largely ignored Utah's seven-play drive that ended in a field goal.

It wasn't like this was a good interview. Palmer brown nosed, asking, "In the big picture, is what ways is the Colorado State football program in better shape than when you took over three years ago?"

And absolutely nothing newsworthy came out of this little chat.

Utah fans certainly didn't care what McElwain had to say. He put Fort Collins in his rearview mirror, so what did CSU fans care? And Florida fans — again, nothing newsworthy was said.

It was a weird decision to do the interview, seemingly signifying that ESPN believed Florida is more important than the teams actually playing in the game. And that's just insulting to everyone involved.

Fighting words • He may not have been altogether aware of it, but ESPN's Mark Neely made a statement late in USU's New Mexico Bowl win over UTEP that wasn't without controversy.

"It wasn't too many years ago, you thought football in the state of Utah and you thought BYU and you thought Utah," he said. "But, you know, Utah State has to be in that conversation, if not right at the top of that list."

Well, the Aggies did beat the Cougars this year. But they didn't play the Utes.

And arguing that USU is the top football team in Utah is, at the very least, somewhat controversial.

Scott D. Pierce covers TV for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.