Category Archives: bowl predictions

Bowl Predictions 2014: Week 2

Okay, let’s do this right this time. As usual, the latest predictions are here.

We’ll start with the playoff.

Playoffs? We’re talking about playoffs? Are you kidding me?
Nope.

Jokes aside, we pretty much have to start here because it require me to pretty much guess what 12 people I don’t know are going to do. I did my projections again through the end of the season, and my #1 and #2 seeds wound up being pretty easy: ACC Champ Florida State and SEC Champ Alabama. From there, it gets much more difficult.

Consider the following teams: 1-loss Big 12 Champion Baylor, 1-loss Big 12 runner-up TCU, 1-loss Pac-12 Champ Oregon, and 1-loss Mississippi State. I have Baylor in as my #3, and to me for the four seed it comes down to Oregon and Mississippi State. This is an extremely tough debate for me, but at the end of the day I think Mississippi State is the better team and I gave them the nod. Fortunately for me, the next few weeks will probably change everything, though if I had to guess it’ll just be a different jumble of teams involved in the handwringing.

Anyway, as it turns out, when it comes to just predicting who goes to what bowls, that’s the easy part. I put FSU and Mississippi State in the Sugar Bowl and sent Alabama and Baylor out west. No, the hard part is figuring out who the at-large teams for the Peach, Fiesta, and Cotton Bowls are.

Here’s the deal with the non-playoff playoff committee controlled bowls. First, there’s the Orange Bowl. Since it’s not a play-off site this year, and the home of the ACC champion, it must take another ACC team. I picked ACC title-game runner-up Duke, since I don’t have them losing until then. If Duke has more than 2-losses after the ACC title game, then it’ll be Clemson. The ACC’s opponent in the Orange bowl is “the highest ranked team from the SEC, Big Ten, or Notre Dame”. Based on my projections, my guess is that even with two losses Mississippi will be the highest ranked team that meets the criteria.

So after that you still have some teams that must go to at-large slots, namely, Oregon, Michigan State, and East Carolina (as the projected highest ranking team from the “non-contract” conferences). This also means three more teams have to come from somewhere. TCU is the only remaining 1-loss team in this scenario, so we have to dip into the pool of two-loss teams. I project this pool to consist of Ohio State (Big Ten west runner-up), Nebraska (Big Ten title game loser), Arizona State (Pac-12 title game loser), and Notre Dame (I have them losing to Arizona State now).

There’s nothing that actually says the committee has to prefer TCU over any of the 2-loss teams, but to make things easier for me I picked them anyway. I then went ahead with Notre Dame and Ohio State, because really if we’re all about the money, it’s hard to beat those two.

So these are my committee-controlled matchups:

  • Peach Bowl: Michigan State vs. Notre Dame. Traditional foes that won’t meet again for a while.
  • Fiesta Bowl: Oregon vs. Ohio State. Rematch of the 2009 Rose Bowl.
  • Orange Bowl: Duke vs. Mississippi. Well, it’s what the contract says.
  • Cotton Bowl: TCU vs. East Carolina. Well, they have to put ECU somewhere.
  • Rose Bowl: #2 Alabama vs. #3 Baylor.
  • Sugar Bowl: #1 Florida State vs. #4 Mississippi State.

 Well, if nothing else, the BCS was at least easier to predict.

ACC
With Duke in the Orange Bowl, Clemson is slam dunk for the Russell Athletic Bowl slot. From there it’s basically guessing at this point what the bowls and conference will do. I’d like to think the ACC won’t send us out to El Paso again just yet, and I could definitely see Miami getting sent to New York City for brand purposes. Other than that, the ACC won’t have enough teams to fill in its slots, but that could (and probably will) change, especially in terms of the teams from the Coastal.

Big Ten
I don’t see any way Michigan makes a bowl, which should make it easier to fire Hoke (provided that he isn’t fired before the end of the season). Supposedly in the new Big Ten lineup the Holiday Bowl is on equal footing with the Citrus and Outback bowls, but that seems really unlikely to me, so I sent Nebraska and Wisconsin to Florida and shipped Maryland to San Diego. Other than that, there’s also a weird sharing agreement with the ACC for the Music City and Taxslayer Bowls. For now, I’m just guessing that the ACC will go to Jacksonville and the Big Ten to Nashville, but that could easily change. Another oddity is the San Francisco Bowl, and I don’t mean in terms of its name (since it’s 50 miles away in Santa Clara, but at least it’ll be in a football stadium now). I figure Northwestern gets sent out west, setting up a brainy matchup with Stanford.

Big 12
Despite losing to them, I have Oklahoma getting the Alamo nod over Kansas State. Otherwise, this one was by the book. I was able to sneak in a Oklahoma State-Texas A&M game in the Liberty Bowl, though.

Pac-12
With only one playoff team, these projections actually have the Pac-12 having two extra teams. In this case, I figure California and UCLA to go 6-6 and get left behind. Any major conference at-large candidate will have somewhere to go, though, and as it turns out I only barely had enough teams anyway. Now, I didn’t say that they’d get to go anywhere cool. I matched UCLA with Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl and California with Cincinnati in the St. Petersburg Bowl (now sponsored by Bitcoin, by the way1). I don’t think you can go wrong with Arizona State versus either Oklahoma or Kansas State in the Alamo Bowl, though. Also, thanks to not having enough teams, I’m projecting Southern Cal to face Arkansas State in the Cactus Bowl. I am pretty sure whoever administers that bowl his praying that the Big 12 doesn’t get two teams in the playoff (which is why that happened).

SEC
The SEC will also be short of teams, due mostly to getting three teams into the playoff. I don’t know if the committee will be so bold as to break the two-teams-per-conference precedent set by the BCS, but as I explained with the Orange Bowl, they may not have a choice. Also, even though it says SEC 2-7, I suspect some of those bowls are “more equal” than others (especially the Outback Bowl). I have Auburn losing a couple more times and winding up there to face Wisconsin, which would definitely be a fun contrast of two teams that like to run the ball but in completely different ways.

Everyone Else
No real surprises anywhere else. I put the extra Sun Belt and MAC teams to work, but we’ll see if that holds up. If it doesn’t, it would a little fun to see what happens, but I’m not really projecting any teams to meet the “too few bowls” criteria. (Though it does remind that I need to figure out who the top five schools in APR are for this season.)

As usual, everything will probably be different next week.

Update (10/28): After some more research, Georgia Southern (along with Old Dominion and Appalachian State) will only be bowl eligible if there are not enough teams. Since in the scenarios for this week that is actually the case, it doesn’t affect anything, but I’ll note it properly in future weeks.

Bowl Predictions 2014: Week 1

It’s that time of year again.

Of course, there are a ton of changes for 2014, with the demise of the BCS and the rise of the playoff. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do the justice that needs to be done for the new process (or, compared to the previous regime, the lack of process).

As usual, I will remind you that these predictions are… predictive. My methods haven’t changed since last year, at least in terms of how I do the predicting part. In short, I look at every team, figure out if they can get to six wins, if they can then go into detail and predict their final record, and then slot them into the the appropriate bowls. At this point in the season, this still involves a lot of guesswork, so oftentimes the Week 1 predictions don’t wind up being all that correct.

I don’t have time to break these down in detail right now, so that will wait until next week. Until then, the predictions are right at their new 2014 URL.

Bowl Games 2013: The Last Part

As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Monday, January 6
8:30: Florida State vs. Auburn (BCS Championship Game @ Pasadena, CA; ESPN): Both of these teams actually have pretty solid defenses (especially FSU), but it’s really hard to see how offense won’t prevail here. (Then again, FSU’s defense did shut down Clemson, easily the best offense their defense faced all year.) I’m predicting a high-scoring shootout where the last team with the ball probably wins. In this scenario, a defensive stop or two will probably decide the game, so I guess I’m basically betting on FSU getting that stop. There’s also a bit of a temptation to point out that FSU pretty much went out and won all their games, while Auburn is two fluke plays away from being in the Outback Bowl or something. But hey, there’s always got be a lot of luck involved in the course of winning a championship based on one game.
Previous meetings: Likely thanks to FSU’s history as an independent patsy (remember: football in the state of Florida basically didn’t exist until 1980 or so), these teams have met 18 times. The first was in 1954, a 33-0 Auburn win. The two teams met regularly until 1963, with FSU earning their best result in that era with a 14-14 tie in 1962. The series resumed again in 1972, being played nearly every other year until 1990 (after which FSU joined the ACC). Florida State’s first win in the series wasn’t until 1977, when they won 24-3. They would only win three more times, in 1987 and 1989 twice due to a meeting in the Sugar Bowl. Auburn won the last meeting in 19980, 20-17. Overall, Auburn leads the series 13-4-1.
Last bowl game: Florida State owns the nation’s longest bowl streak, and it really isn’t even close. This is their 32nd straight bowl game (compared to Virginia Tech’s 21st). The streak dates back roughly to FSU’s ascendance as a national power, but they lost the first game in the streak 24-7 in the 1979/80 Orange bowl to Oklahoma. (FSU went 8-3 in 1978 but didn’t get a bowl bid, if they had, the streak would actually be 34 games since they made a bowl in 1977. Of course, things were different back then and FSU didn’t really beat anyone that year.) FSU beat Northern Illinois 31-10 in last season’s Orange Bowl. Auburn, as you probably know by now, went 3-9 last year and didn’t go to a bowl, so their last bowl game was the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl, a 43-24 win over Virginia.
Announcers: Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit. Don’t forget, though, that ESPN is doing a “megacast” of the game, with alternate presentations available on the entire ESPN family of networks. I’m personally interested in the hopefully more tactically oriented broadcast on ESPN2.

Bowl Games 2013: Part VII

As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Thursday, January 2
8:30: Alabama vs. Oklahoma (Sugar Bowl @ New Orleans, LA; ESPN): Alabama has only the one, extremely flukely loss. (Sure, maybe they lose in overtime, but nonetheless a 108-yard field goal kick return at the end of regulation is pretty much a fluke.) Oklahoma, meanwhile, suffered an inexplicable Shootout loss to Texas and as though that wasn’t bad enough, they got blown out by Baylor. Alabama is better in all phases of the game than the Sooners and knows who their quarterback is. The only thing that could be in OU’s favor is that they did beat their hated in-state rival in their last game and could have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, but otherwise it would be madness to not pick Alabama.
Previous meetings: Four. Alabama’s first and only win in the series was in the first meeting back in 1963, where they won 17-0 in the Orange Bowl. The next meeting was a 24-24 tie in the 1970 edition of something called the Astro-Blubonnet Bowl. The two teams played a regular season series in 2002 and 2003, and Oklahoma won both of those games, 37-27 and 20-13.
Last bowl game: This is the Tide’s tenth straight bowl game, a streak that now dates back to the 2004 Music City Bowl, which they lost 20-16 to Minnesota. Last year, they won the BCS Championship game over Notre Dame 42-14. This is only the second time in the past five seasons they haven’t been playing for the title. For the Sooners, this is their fifteenth straight bowl game. The streaks started with the 1999 Independence Bowl, where they lost to Mississippi 27-25. They got routed by Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl last year, 41-13.
Announcers: Brad Nessler and Todd Blackledge

Friday, January 3
7:30: Oklahoma State vs. Missouri (Cotton Bowl @ Arlington, TX; FOX): This is one of the games I’m least confident about. Both these teams are really solid. I have Mizzou as a slight favorite, but really, I consider this a toss-up.
Previous meetings: These former Big 8 foes have met 51 times. The first was a 13-6 Mizzou win way back in 1915. There was another meeting in 1921, but the two met regularly from 1949 through 1997. Meetings became more intermittent in the Big 12, but they still met semi-regularly from 2000 through 2011, where Oklahoma State won the last contest 45-24. Overall, Mizzou has a 28-23 series lead.
Last bowl game: This is Oklahoma State’s eight straight bowl game, a streak that’d be longer if not for a 4-7 recod in 2005. The streak started with a 34-31 victory over Alabama in the 2006 Independence Bowl. Last year they beat Purdue 58-14 in the Zombie Cotton/Heart of Dallas Bowl. Mizzou had a seven bowl game streak snapped when they went 5-7 last year, so their last appearance was the 2001 Independence Bowl, where they beat North Carolina 41-24.
Announcers: Gus Johnson and Charles Davis

8:30: Ohio State vs. Clemson (Orange Bowl @ Miami Gardens, FL; ESPN): Boy howdy, talk about motivation, huh? Ohio State was basically in the national title game until being upset by Michigan State in the Big Ten title game. This was finally going to be the year Tajh Boyd and Clemson beat in-state nemesis South Carolina. Neither of those things happened. Both these teams have excellent offensive talents, and despite their lofty defensive rankings I still expect points to be scored. That said, I like the Buckeyes just a bit more.
Previous meetings: Just one, in the 1978 Gator Bowl. Clemson won 17-15. That game is more well known for something else, though.
Last bowl game: After a year of sanctions, Ohio State returns to the post-season. The sanctions interrupted as twelve game bowl streak. that last game was a 24-17 loss to Florida in the 2011/2012 Gator Bowl. This is Clemson’s ninth straight bowl game, but if not for a few sub-par seasons they’d have a streak that dates to 1985. Instead, it starts with the 2005 Champs Sports Bowl win over Colorado by a 19-10 margin, and the latest game was a 25-24 win over LSU in the 2012 Chick-Fil-A Bowl.
Announcers: Joe Tessitore and Matt Millen

Saturday, January 4
1:00: Vanderbilt vs. Houston (BBVA Compass Bowl @ Birmingham, AL; ESPN): I have Vanderbilt as the winners here but I don’t really have a strong favorite here. The Commodores have four losses but none are inexplicable, and even a few solid wins. Houston’s level of competition was just, well, lesser. Their best win is, uh, Rice? They lost to all three of the AAC frontrunners but they also did not suffer any bad losses. Houston looks better with basic statistics, but again, the level of competition was lesser. I’m definitely not an ESS-EEE-CEE guy but I’m still leaning Vandy.
Previous meetings: This is the first meeting between these two teams.
Last bowl game: Last year was the first time Vandy had ever been to two straight bowls, so suffice it to say this is the first time they’ve ever been to three straight. The streak started with the 2011 Liberty Bowl, where they lost to Cincinnati 31-24. They won the 2012 Music City Bowl 38-24 over NC State. This is Houston’s first bowl since the 2011/2012 TicketCity Bowl (now the Heart of Dallas Bowl), which they won 30-14.
Announcers: Dave Neal and Andre Ware

Sunday, January 5
9:00: Arkansas State vs. Ball State (godaddy.com Bowl @ Mobile, AL; ESPN): This doesn’t appear to be a good matchup for Arkansas State. Ball State was one of the best teams from the MAC this year and in general I think it’s okay to say that the MAC is a better conference than the Sun Belt. As noted below, this is also Arkansas State’s third straight trip to Mobile (fourth, really, since they also played South Alabama at home), so there’s a big question of whether they want to be there. I have Ball State in this one.
Previous meetings: This is the first meeting between these two teams.
Last bowl game: This is Arkansas State’s third straight bowl game and third straight godaddy.com Bowl. They lost to Northern Illinois back in 2011/2012, 38-20, but won last season over Kent State, 17-13. Ball State lost to Central Florida in the Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl last season, 38-17.
Announcers: Carter Blackburn and Danny Kanell

Bowl Games 2013: All Is (Not) Quiet on New Year’s Day

As usual, all times Eastern and all predictions wrong.

Wednesday, January 1
12:00:

  • Nebraska vs. Georgia (Gator Bowl @ Jacksonville, FL; ESPN2): Even with their backup quarterback, I still feel like Georgia is more competent on offense than Nebraska is.
    Previous meetings: Two. The first meeting was a 1969 Sun Bowl matchup that Nebraska won 45-6. The most recent was technically a year earlier in the Capital One Bowl, which Georgia won 45-31. Georgia’s defense can be a bit of a liability, but Nebraska has looked so lost at times on offense this year that they should be able to hold them off.
    Last bowl game: This is Nebraska’s sixth straight bowl game, and it’d be longer if not for two sub-.500 seasons in 2007 and 2004, because then the streak would stretch back to 1969. This streak is even more impressive when you consider the explosion of the bowls in the past ten years. As-is, the current run dates back to the 2008/9 Gator Bowl, a 26-21 win over Clemson. Last year, well, see above. Georgia is tied for the third-longest active streak with Georgia Tech, having made seventeen straight bowl games. Their streak dates back to the a 33-6 win over Wisconsin in the 1997/8 Outback Bowl. As for last year, well, see above.
    Announcers: Mike Patrick and Ed Cunningham
  • North Texas vs. Nevada-Las Vegas (Heart of Dallas Bowl @ Dallas, TX; ESPNU): The Mean Green sport the country’s ninth-ranked scoring defense. I don’t think UNLV is going to test whether that is legitimate or not.
    Previous meetings: Four, and North Texas has lost all of them. The first was in 1986, a 27-26 UNLV win. The most recent was in 2000, a 38-0 UNLV win.
    Last bowl game: UNT went to four straight New Orleans Bowls from 2001 to 2004, but they haven’t been to a bowl since. They lost 31-10 to Southern Mississippi in that 2004 New Orleans Bowl. UNLV had the longest drought of any team appearing in this year’s post-season, last appearing in the 2000 Las Vegas Bowl. They beat Arkansas 31-14 in that game.
    Announcers: Clay Matvick and Matt Stinchcomb

1:00:

  • South Carolina vs. Wisconsin (Capital One Bowl @ Orlando, FL; ABC): Both of these teams are pretty close, statistically. The key for Wisconsin may be for them to somehow forget their otherwise inexplicable loss to Penn State to close out the season. Overall, I like the Gamecocks here. Wisconsin arguably played two or three teams with functioning offenses and lost/should have won two of them (Arizona State and Ohio State).
    Previous meetings: This is the first meeting between these two teams.
    Last bowl game: This is the Gamecocks’s sixth straight bowl game. The current run started with the 2008/9 Outback Bowl, a 31-10 loss to Iowa. Last year, they won the Outback Bowl 33-28. Wisconsin is appearing in their 12th straight game, dating back to the 2002 Alamo Bowl. They beat Colorado 31-28 in that game.
    Announcers: Dave Pasch and Brian Griese
  • Iowa vs. Louisiana State (Outback Bowl @ Tampa, FL; ESPN): Speaking of non-functioning Big Ten offenses, Iowa comes in ranked 74th in the country in scoring offense. I’m also having a hard time figuring out how they can score against LSU’s defense, even though that unit isn’t as elite as it’s been in the past. Conversely, at least according to the stats, Iowa’s defense is really good and allows only 18.8 points per game. That said, once again, this was such a bad offensive year in the Big Ten (for teams that weren’t Ohio State) that it’s hard to figure out how meaningful that number is. In the end, I have to go with the team that might actually score three touchdowns, and that team figures to be LSU.
    Previous meetings: One, in the 2004/2005 Capital One Bowl. Iowa won 30-25.
    Last bowl game: Iowa’s last bowl appearance was the 2011 Insight Bowl, where they lost 31-14 to Oklahoma. LSU is appearing in their fourteenth straight bowl game, dating back to a 24-14 win over Georgia Tech in the 2000 Peach Bowl. They lost last season’s Chick-fil-A Bowl 25-24 to Clemson.
    Announcers: Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden

5:00: Michigan State vs. Stanford (Rose Bowl @ Pasadena, CA; ESPN): This is being billed as an old-school, smash-mouth football game and honestly it’s hard to figure that’s wrong. I have Stanford here, but this game figures to be very tight, especially if both offenses disappear as they have at times during the season.
Previous meetings: Five. The first two were back to back Michigan State wins in 1955 and 1956 (38-14 and 21-7, respectively). Stanford split the 1961-1962 series, as well as the most recent win: a 38-0 Sun Bowl win in 1996.
Last bowl game: Back in 2007, Sparty began a run of seven straight bowl games with a 24-21 loss to Boston College in the Champs Sports Bowl. Last season, Sparty prevailed in a 17-16 victory over TCU. Stanford’s current five game streak began with a 31-27 loss to Oklahoma in the 2009 Sun Bowl. They beat Wisconsin 20-14 in last season’s Rose Bowl.
Announcers: Brent Musbuger and Kirk Herbstreit

8:30: Baylor vs. Central Florida (Fiesta Bowl @ Glendale, AZ; ESPN): I actually don’t have a very good read on this game. The easy way out would be to say sure, Baylor’s going to struggle early and then drop 70 on them. But UCF did play South Carolina, and they gave the Gamecocks absolutely everything they wanted in what wound up being a 28-25 South Carolina win. Baylor also looked lackluster in their last three games, and with mounting injury issues they got blown out by Oklahoma State, barely beat TCU, and then solidly beat Texas, but they “only” scored 30 points. Nonetheless, it is difficult to see how UCF will be able to keep up with Baylor’s offense, but if Baylor’s offense gets off to a slow start this game could get interesting and stay interesting.
Previous meetings: This is the first meeting between these two teams.
Last bowl game: Baylor’s four game bowl streak began with a 38-14 loss to Illinois in the Texas Bowl back in 2010. Last season, they smashed UCLA to the tune of a 49-26 win in the Holiday Bowl. UCF won the 2012 Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl over Ball State 38-17.
Announcers: Sean McDonough and Chris Spielman