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Upperclassman readers of this space might be familiar with seeing weekly bowl projections during the season. I've been doing them since 2012, with a few details that are hopefully of some value to you.
For one thing, I don't just list a bunch of matchups and hit publish. I always try to explain parts that might not make immediate sense to people who haven't agreed to let the bowl season symbiote infest their brains. None of this is supposed to make sense, but the goal is to try and demonstrate how the puzzle functions.
These also aren't just slapped together based on eyeballing. I only list teams that can clearly get to six wins and that would then have a good chance of being invited. During the season, I base these on the results of full-season picks for all of FBS, with only one winner for each game. Each Sunday around 3 a.m., I update my board based on that weekend, meaning one more step toward a (hopefully somewhat) accurate vision.
The starting point for that board is mostly based on Vegas preseason win projection totals (those fluctuate over time and from book to book, so apologies if your team was at 5.5 wins when I checked). Hey, here's that starting point! Let's talk more after some bullet lists.
The College Football Playoff
Well, not strictly -- I'm also putting a university from the state of Ohio in over Georgia, which has a very slightly higher projection but which would lack a conference title, if numbers were to bear out. Doing these picks also requires thinking about how CFP and bowl committees might handle such scenarios.
(Obviously, we've seen UGA and an OSU are capable of going either way in such a scenario, but luckily no one is booking travel yet.)
As for seeding, it's simple: the #1 team on Selection Sunday gets the semifinal more convenient to its campus. The #4 team joins it there. The other two go to the other semi.
The rest of the New Year's Six
The Rose and Sugar take the next-ranked teams from their associated conferences (and/or league champs, if one missed the CFP). The Orange goes to the ACC's best non-Clemson team (unless Clemson does the unthinkable and, like, loses games) and the top-ranked at-large from the Big Ten, SEC, or South Bend. This means one of the Cotton's spots is booked for the top-ranking Group of 5 champion.
That last spot came down to several teams projected for nine regular season wins. I chose LSU over teams like Florida and Oregon due to schedule strength. If these teams all hit 9-3, the committee will probably be most impressed by the one that traveled to Tuscaloosa and Austin and so forth.
Also, apologies to Uga, but the math dictates a reunion.
Working class bowl games
Each conference has its own pecking order of bowl games. When Banner Society publishes its central page for bowl projections, I'll find a way to list those, but I wanted to keep this newsletter simple.
The main thing to keep in mind about bowl games: they aren't designed to reward your place in the conference standings or reflect the quality of your degree. They're designed to make money for the organizations that own bowl games.
This is the part where the Popular Teams Get Rewarded Just For Being Popular conspiracy theories are usually realest. While conferences push bowls to invite the best teams first, bowls always want teams that will bring lots of ticket-buyers and eyeballs. When projecting, I try not to automatically snub smaller schools, but I also want to think realistically.
** = ESPN owns all these games, so these conference ties can end up being quite fluid on Selection Sunday as teams are mixed and matched for TV.
Upperclassman readers of this space might be familiar with seeing weekly bowl projections during the season. I've been doing them since 2012, with a few details that are hopefully of some value to you.
For one thing, I don't just list a bunch of matchups and hit publish. I always try to explain parts that might not make immediate sense to people who haven't agreed to let the bowl season symbiote infest their brains. None of this is supposed to make sense, but the goal is to try and demonstrate how the puzzle functions.
These also aren't just slapped together based on eyeballing. I only list teams that can clearly get to six wins and that would then have a good chance of being invited. During the season, I base these on the results of full-season picks for all of FBS, with only one winner for each game. Each Sunday around 3 a.m., I update my board based on that weekend, meaning one more step toward a (hopefully somewhat) accurate vision.
The starting point for that board is mostly based on Vegas preseason win projection totals (those fluctuate over time and from book to book, so apologies if your team was at 5.5 wins when I checked). Hey, here's that starting point! Let's talk more after some bullet lists.
The College Football Playoff
- Championship (New Orleans): Clemson vs. Alabama
- Fiesta semifinal (Glendale, AZ): Alabama vs. Oklahoma
- Peach semifinal (Atlanta): Clemson vs. a university from the state of Ohio
Well, not strictly -- I'm also putting a university from the state of Ohio in over Georgia, which has a very slightly higher projection but which would lack a conference title, if numbers were to bear out. Doing these picks also requires thinking about how CFP and bowl committees might handle such scenarios.
(Obviously, we've seen UGA and an OSU are capable of going either way in such a scenario, but luckily no one is booking travel yet.)
As for seeding, it's simple: the #1 team on Selection Sunday gets the semifinal more convenient to its campus. The #4 team joins it there. The other two go to the other semi.
The rest of the New Year's Six
- Cotton (Arlington, TX): Boise State vs. LSU
- Orange (Miami): Miami vs. Notre Dame
- Rose (Pasadena, CA): Michigan vs. Washington
- Sugar (New Orleans): Texas vs. Georgia
The Rose and Sugar take the next-ranked teams from their associated conferences (and/or league champs, if one missed the CFP). The Orange goes to the ACC's best non-Clemson team (unless Clemson does the unthinkable and, like, loses games) and the top-ranked at-large from the Big Ten, SEC, or South Bend. This means one of the Cotton's spots is booked for the top-ranking Group of 5 champion.
That last spot came down to several teams projected for nine regular season wins. I chose LSU over teams like Florida and Oregon due to schedule strength. If these teams all hit 9-3, the committee will probably be most impressed by the one that traveled to Tuscaloosa and Austin and so forth.
Also, apologies to Uga, but the math dictates a reunion.
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Each conference has its own pecking order of bowl games. When Banner Society publishes its central page for bowl projections, I'll find a way to list those, but I wanted to keep this newsletter simple.
The main thing to keep in mind about bowl games: they aren't designed to reward your place in the conference standings or reflect the quality of your degree. They're designed to make money for the organizations that own bowl games.
This is the part where the Popular Teams Get Rewarded Just For Being Popular conspiracy theories are usually realest. While conferences push bowls to invite the best teams first, bowls always want teams that will bring lots of ticket-buyers and eyeballs. When projecting, I try not to automatically snub smaller schools, but I also want to think realistically.
- Alamo (San Antonio): TCU vs. Oregon
- Arizona (Tucson): Utah State vs. UCLA*
- Armed Forces (Fort Worth)**: Northwestern vs. Air Force
- Bahamas**: Southern Miss vs. Northern Illinois
- Belk (Charlotte): NC State vs. Kentucky
- Birmingham**: Indiana* vs. South Carolina
- Boca Raton**: Houston vs. FAU
- Camellia (Montgomery, AL): Western Michigan vs. Troy
- Camping World (Orlando): Florida State vs. Iowa State
- Cheez-It (Phoenix): Army* vs. USC
- Citrus (Orlando): Nebraska vs. Florida
- Cure (Orlando): USF vs. Georgia Southern
- First Responder (Dallas)**: Texas Tech vs. North Texas
- Frisco (TX)**: Cincinnati vs. Stanford*
- Gasparilla (Tampa)**: UCF vs. Marshall
- Gator (Jacksonville): Michigan State vs. Tennessee
- Hawaii**: SMU vs. BYU
- Holiday (San Diego): Wisconsin vs. Utah
- Independence (Shreveport, LA): Wake Forest vs. FIU*
- Las Vegas**: Fresno State vs. Arizona State
- Liberty (Memphis): Oklahoma State vs. Memphis*
- Military (Annapolis, MD): Temple vs. Pitt
- Mobile: Toledo vs. Appalachian State
- Music City (Nashville): Virginia Tech vs. Texas A&M
- New Mexico (Albuquerque)**: UAB vs. San Diego State
- New Orleans: Louisiana Tech vs. Arkansas State
- Outback (Tampa): Penn State vs. Auburn
- Pinstripe (New York City): Syracuse vs. Minnesota
- Potato (Boise)**: Ohio vs. Nevada
- Quick Lane (Detroit): Boston College vs. Purdue
- Redbox (Santa Clara, CA): Iowa vs. Washington State
- Sun (El Paso): Virginia vs. Arizona
- Texas (Houston)**: Baylor vs. Mississippi State
** = ESPN owns all these games, so these conference ties can end up being quite fluid on Selection Sunday as teams are mixed and matched for TV.
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