Category Archives: bowl predictions

Bowl Predictions 2015: Week 3

The latest predictions are up, for what that’s worth. Why so glum?

I still have an unprecedented seven open bowl slots. I’m pretty sure I’ve never gotten into November hurting for teams, but this year looks particularly dire. It may be worth noting some regulars that do not appear in this week’s edition:

  • Virginia Tech (2nd longest active bowl streak at 22 years)
  • Georgia Tech (tied-3rd longest active bowl streak at 18 years)
  • Nebraska (perennial power)
  • South Carolina (consistently made bowls under Spurrier)
  • Kansas State (is the magic running out?)

And those are power five teams that have been to a bowl at least the past five years in a row.

Part of the problem are also the smaller teams. After usually getting an automatic loss or two in the early part of the season, these teams are behind the eight-ball in getting to six wins. Here’s how many I have getting in from each of the minor conferences:

  • American: 7/13
  • Conference USA: 7/12
  • Mid-American: 6/14
  • Mountain West: 6/12
  • Sun Belt: 5/11

The Power 5 aren’t much better. I have half the ACC Atlantic missing on a bowl game, for instance.

Hopefully, it’s a situation that improves in the next couple of weeks, or else this is going to start getting tough.

Bowl Predictions 2015: Week 2

They’re late but they’re up. I’m three teams short again, huzzah!

Just in case, I looked up the top 5 in the most recent APR scores in case I need some 5-7 teams. Problem is, it has to be one of the top five in the APR, and no in that group is looking likely to finish 5-7. (Indeed, they’ll all probably finish with much better records.) Again, there is no need to panic just yet, because as upsets happen things will shake out. That said, also for that reason I’m not comfortable doing a full analysis just yet. Look for that after Week 10 of the season, I’d say.

Bowl Predictions 2015: Week 1

It’s that time once again. In the interest of not burying the lead, here’s a direct link to the first edition of the 2015 bowl predictions.

Again, the process is the same that I’ve been using in the past few years, though without the BCS part. The key thing to realize is that I go through every team, look at their remaining schedule, and then try to figure out how many more games they will win. This early, this tends to not be a very exact science, as since this is college football we’re talking about, wacky upsets happen.

This time around, for the time in a long time (if ever), I’m actually short three teams. Of course, we have 80 possible bids this year, so the fact I’m predicting 77 of the sport’s 127 teams at this level will have .500 records or better is still pretty astounding. This is where the previous paragraph comes in: since upsets will happen and some teams will improve while others get worse, you’ll have a team that really closes out the year and rallies to a 8-4 record while another might slump to 7-5 after starting 5-2. It’s hard to call these things, sometimes. Nonetheless, I probably do need to see which teams would be eligible at 5-7, if it comes to that.

In previous years, I released the picks this week because this is usually when the first BCS standings came out. Without the BCS I’m now trying to guess what a group of thirteen people will vote on in a conference room in Dallas in a couple of weeks. To give an idea of what I mean by my not predicting a lot of upsets, though, the teams in the playoffs and the committee-controlled bowls all have two losses or less by my current predictions, which will probably not wind up being the case by the time December rolls around.

So, to reiterate: it’s early. If I have your team in the Boca Raton Bowl instead of the Orange Bowl, don’t panic. I’m probably wrong.

Bowl Games 2014: Final

And thus, the 2014-2015 college football season is concluded.

My final results are up, but if you don’t want to click the link, then I’ll put it here: I went 23-16 this year (which means I am now 274-220 overall). I got off to a pretty strong start, but other than going perfect on New Year’s Eve I pretty much faded down the stretch. In particular, New Year’s Day was a disaster for me, as I missed three out of the five games. Afterward, I failed to really recover, going 2-5 down the stretch.

But hey, there’s a reason why I always say, “all predictions wrong”. Nonetheless, I do continue to get more than half of them right. Perhaps next year I’ll start comparing myself against the spread or use other metrics than just wins and losses, but that’ll be determined sometime next December I suspect.

Some closing thoughts on the season as a whole.

  • For starters, my Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets finished eight in the AP Poll, blissfully one spot ahead of Georgia and Tech’s best ranking since finishing ninth after the 1998 season. I never expected this sort of season, but neither did anyone else. Next year, it is unlikely we will surprise anyone. With Justin Thomas returning, I suspect we will start the season ranked in the top 15, and maybe even the top 10.
  • How about those Buckeyes? They committed four turnovers and won by 22, which really means that it wasn’t even that close.
  • Will we see a shift in the perception of the power five conferences after this? I believe that we’re back to some real parity in college football. The only way we can really tell, though, is if we get more power five teams playing each other during the season. We’ll see how that shakes out when we do our usual out-of-conference schedule rankings. Suffice it to say, though, reports of the Big Ten’s death were greatly exaggerated.

And with that, this site will be mostly dormant again through the spring and summer. That said, do look for some content relatively soon, as arguably my favorite part of the World Cup will start up again this spring: qualifying.

Until then.

Bowl Games 2014: The Big One

And here it is.

While I don’t think a four-team playoff is really ideal, this is the closet we’ve got for now in major college football. Let’s enjoy it for what it is.

As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Monday, January 12
8:30: Oregon vs. Ohio State (College Football Playoff National Championship @ Arlington, TX; ESPN): There are better, and more in-depth, previews than I can provide here. But I’ll high the highlights. For starters, let’s talk about the games that proceeded this one.
I think most of us expected Oregon to beat Florida State, but goodness I don’t think anyone expected the annihilation that occurred, largely of FSU’s own doing. It’s hard to survive five turnovers against anyone (where was that against us in the ACC title game?), but against the most efficient offense in the country? Forget about it.
Ohio State over Alabama will be the upset of the year, provided the Buckeyes lose this game. Like many others, I gave them no shot, what with their backup-backup quarterback against a Nick Saban defense. Forget about it, right? Well, not so much. Ohio State go off to a slow start, but they came out in the second half and dominated the game.
What’s at stake for these teams? For Oregon, it has to be a little validation, I would think. In their current run of success (with Pac-10/12 titles in 2009, 2010, 2011, and this season), the national title has eluded the Ducks. They made the title game in the 2010 season, only to be beat by Cam Newton and company, starting the narrative that they just weren’t tough enough to challenge the all-mighty SEC. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if Duck partisans feel a bit cheated that their path to the national title won’t have Alabama or any other SEC school in it.
For Ohio State, in many ways, this is a team that is almost playing with house money, which feels a bit weird to say about a team with the sort of historical success they Buckeyes have had, but hear me out. This is the second season since the 2012 team that went 12-0 but was on sanctions. No one gave them any chance after they lost Braxton Miller, and then no one gave them any chance after the loss to Virginia Tech. (Indeed, the weirdest thing about reading recaps of that game are the bits about how it’s a solid victory for VPI and a way for them to get back in the national discussion. Uh, not so much, as it turns out!) No one gave them a chance to beat Alabama. Yet, here we are.
As for the game itself, I expect points. These two teams boast two of the most efficient offenses in the nation. Their defenses are also pretty similar, though the Big Ten still has enough plodding offenses to skew the numbers somewhat. Overall, I came in thinking this one was going to be hard to call, and the research I have done so far has only supported this. I guess this is true of most games, but this one is really going to come down which team plays better tonight. I think Oregon is still slightly better, so that’s going to be my guess.
Confidence: not applicable, as to win the group I’m in I have to pick strategically and go with Ohio State.
Previous meetings: Eight, actually, and Ohio State has won all of them. The first was all the way back in the 1957-58 Rose Bowl, which the Buckeyes won 10-7. Apparently they hit it off, as the two teams met in the regular season four time in the 60’s. Another home-and-home occurred in 1983 and 1987, but that was it until Ohio State’s 26-17 upset of Oregon in the 2009-2010 Rose Bowl.
Last bowl game: This is Oregon’s tenth straight bowl game, going back to a 17-14 loss to Oklahoma in the 2005 Holiday Bowl. They beat Texas 30-7 in last season’s Alamo Bowl. Thanks to their 2012 sanctions, Ohio State didn’t go to a bowl that year despite going 12-0. If they had, their bowl streak would stretch back all the way back to the 1989 season. Instead, their streak is now two, and last year they lost to Clemson in the Orange Bowl, 40-35.
Announcers: Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit