Bowl Predictions 2018: Week 3

They’re real and they’re spectacular.

Anyway, we are currently at 65 teams, so we’re probably going to get the number of bowl eligible teams we need. Huzzah! I should probably start going into more detail in addition to just posting the link, so let’s do this newspaper columnist style:

  • If Oklahoma winds up beating West Virginia twice, I think that will be enough to get them into the playoff over Michigan. If I had to guess, the committee will be looking for reasons to include a Michigan team that lost to Notre Dame rather than exclude them, unless, somewhat ironically, Notre Dame ceases to be undefeated.
  • That said, putting four SEC teams into the playoff-controlled bowls really stresses the system. I ran out of teams even before getting out the SEC Tier 2 bowl quagmire, so guessing which teams will get at-large to those bowls is a lot of work.
  • That said, I am here for a West Virginia-LSU Sugar Bowl when and if that actually happens.
  • I’m pretty excited Georgia Tech was able to get bowl eligible, but I’m less sure about where we’ll actually go. It looks pretty likely only Clemson will get into the CFP-bowls (NC State had a great shot until they lost to Wake Forest last weekend) from the ACC, so that probably means Tech will miss out, but it’s currently hard to say. In the next couple of weeks bowl rumors should start to float around, and I’ll have a better idea.
  • I feel a bit bad that the two best teams from the Mountain West this year, Utah State and Fresno State, will probably play each other on December 1st and then have a bowl game two weeks later.
  • That said, I am also here for HERM versus Utah State in the Las Vegas Bowl.
  • I like to think that teams with winning records will get picked before 6-6 teams, so I wound up putting Miami in the Quick Lane Bowl. It’s a shame that the Miami in Ohio isn’t going to a bowl this year, because otherwise we’d have a decent shot at a Miami-Miami game for only the fourth time ever.
  • Another thing I feel a bit bad about: “Congratulations on your under-the-radar great season, Cincy! Now watch as everyone just talks about Lane Kiffin the whole time because you’ll get to play them in the Gasparilla Bowl.”

And there we are for now. I’m traveling next Sunday into Monday, so I have no idea when next week’s predictions will be posted.