Category Archives: bowl predictions

Bowl Predictions 2010: Week 7

Late once again, but it did at least give a chance to absorb all the bowl announcements from this week. So let’s do this.

The BCS

As usual, we’ll start with the BCS. With Boise’s upset, there were a few changes, to say the last. The top of the pile stays the same, though Auburn did finally pick up enough votes to pass Oregon. With Arkansas upsetting LSU, that also set up the Razorbacks to get into the Sugar Bowl, which will still probably take Ohio State as an at-large. From there, things get tricky. Wisconsin and TCU slot into the Rose, the winner of the Big 12 title game will go to the Fiesta, and the winner of the ACC title game to the Orange. This leaves two slots, one in the Orange and one in the Fiesta. The Orange gets first crack at the remaining pool of teams. However, this pool, as things currently stand, is limited to two teams. Stanford is currently #4 in the BCS, and as such is guaranteed a BCS bid. The Big East winner is as well. Neither is a super attractive option for either bowl (and until Boise and LSU lost I thought Stanford was going to be shut out of the BCS). Conventional wisdom at the moment says that if UConn wins the Big East, then the Orange will take the most attractive TV match-up and get Stanford, leaving the Fiesta with UConn. However, if West Virginia emerges at the top of the Big East pile and Virginia Tech wins the ACC, then the Orange could set up the first meeting of VPI and WVU since 2005. Right now I think UConn will tomorrow so the latter scenario is a moot point.

ACC

The ACC is a jumbled mess right now. Well, not at the top: the winner of the title game will go to the Orange and the loser will go to the Chick-fil-a. From there, it’s an absolute mess. I’ll just go down the list of ACC bowls and say which teams I think are possibilities for each game:

  1. Champs Sports Bowl: NC State, Maryland, Miami
  2. Sun Bowl: Miami, Maryland, NC State
  3. Car Care Bowl: NC State, Clemson, North Carolina, Maryland
  4. Music City Bowl: Clemson, North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia Tech
  5. Independence Bowl: Georgia Tech, Clemson, North Carolina
  6. Military Bowl: Maryland, Clemson, North Carolina, Boston College
  7. Fight Hunger Bowl: Boston College, Georgia Tech

The rumor mill isn’t much better. What you see on the page are my best guesses, but really almost anything could happen. NC State’s loss to Maryland combined with Miami’s loss and subsequent firing of Randy Shannon really wrecked the ACC bowl picture and it’s tough to say what will happen to those three schools. (Somewhat ironically, the fact that GT didn’t get blown out as most folks predicted may have actually helped them in light of the above and also Clemson’s blowout loss to South Carolina.)

Big East

Ugh. With Notre Dame’s win over USC last weekend I expect them to get an invite to the Champs Sports Bowl, which pushes everything else in the Big East down and even gives them an extra team in Louisville. Otherwise, I don’t really want to talk about this much because all the teams play tomorrow and everything could change.

Big 12

At this point, the Big 12 almost certainly won’t get two teams into the BCS, so the Cotton went ahead and grabbed Texas A&M. This means the Big 12 title game loser will probably end up in the Alamo Bowl. At issue now are the Insight and Holiday Bowls, which will likely be choosing between Oklahoma State and Missouri. From there, the Big 12 should shake out predictably, with K-State already in the Pinstripe Bowl and Baylor and Texas Tech remaining for the Texas and TicketCity Bowls. I like Baylor getting rewarded for their good season by getting the Texas Bow bid, leaving Texas Tech for the game in the Cotton Bowl that isn’t the Cotton Bowl.

Big Ten

The Big Ten is pretty straightforward. Wisconsin and Ohio State go to the Rose and Sugar, leaving the Capital One for Michigan State. I then like Penn State to the Outback Bowl, but they could swap places with Iowa and end up in the Gator Bowl. I then like Michigan for the Insight, Illinois to the Texas, and Northwestern left at the TicketCity. Easy. (Now watch me be totally wrong.)

Pac-10

Arizona State is 6-6, but played 2 DI-AA teams (despite the fact that Pac-10 teams only have 3 OOC games anyway) and is not eligible. This means there are currently 3 Pac-10 teams eligible: Oregon, Stanford, and Arizona. Washington and Oregon State can both get eligible with wins in their rivalry games, but I think it goes without saying that one of those teams is a lot more likely to win tomorrow than the other.

SEC

So the SEC will probably get its customary two BCS bids barring disaster in the SEC title game tomorrow. From there, Alabama will probably get the nod for the Capital One, leaving South Carolina for the Outback and LSU for the Cotton. I like Mississippi State to get the invitation to the Chick-fil-a, followed by the Gator reluctantly taking Florida. The rumor mill really likes Tennessee to the Music City, so that works for me, followed by UGA to the Liberty and, finally, Kentucky to the Compass.

Mid-majors

Many mid-major bids have gone out already. The problem is the rumored moves and moves that have already happened. For instance, UTEP (from Conference USA) is in the New Mexico Bowl, which means that there was likely a swap with the New Orleans Bowl which will probably send a WAC team there. (The details of the swap are not yet known for certain though. There could be other swaps as well, engineered by the conferences and the bowls owned by ESPN (which are many). Also, it looks like Boise will likely end up at the Fight Hunger Bowl, eschewing the home blue turf, which may send Nevada there. Miscellaneous MAC teams will probably fill the gaps left by the Pac-10 and Big Ten, though I don’t know which ones will go where. Fortunately for bowl directors, though, there will be enough teams, and I predict there will be one extra.

Look for the final predictions to go up late Saturday or early Sunday, as by the time ESPN goes on the air with their selection show most of the bids will probably already be known.

Bowl Predictions 2010: Week 4

As usual, the predictions are right over here. Let’s do this.

  • Oregon and Auburn control their destinies. I had multiple people ask me Saturday if TCU had any chance of passing either of them, and while TCU got close this week after shellacking Utah, the answer is “no”. TCU plays a decent San Diego State team Saturday, but after that their only remaining game is in two weeks against a New Mexico outfit that is, by virtue of a turnover fueled win over Wyoming last weekend, probably only the second worst team in the country. That will hurt their SoS a bit. Honestly, what might happen is Auburn and Oregon switch places in the polls again, but either way TCU will be on the outside looking in. Unless one of them loses. 

    It’s all part of the plan….
  • If Oregon loses, I would say it’s pretty certain TCU will get a shot. However, I agree with ESPN’s Brad Edwards that a 1-loss SEC champion Auburn team could very well vault its way back up into the top two. Auburn is currently #1 in all but 1 computer poll (and the highest and lowest polls are thrown out by the BCS), so a loss to, say, Alabama and then a title game win over Florida or South Carolina would probably get good enough to keep them at around #2 in the computers. If the humans, say, put them back up at #3, they could very well get in. At this point, I don’t think any other 1-loss teams have a shot, except for maybe LSU. (If Auburn loses Saturday to Georgia, I will go ahead and project LSU into the title game. There would be no other explanation for why Auburn would lose to UGA other than to set up LSU to win the SEC and vault its way into the BCS title game. Just no other reason.)
  • Right now, I think Wisconsin has the easiest path to the Big Ten title, so I’m projecting them into the Rose. However, Ohio State has a good shot of being rewarded with a BCS berth provided they win out. In the Big 12, I’m now projecting Oklahoma State to win the conference. Note that’s highly subject to change pretty much whenever.
  • Whither Boise State? They could very well be 12-0, no lower than #4 in the any of the polls the entire year, and be shut out of the BCS entirely. Only the top ranked non-automatic qualifying conference team is rewarded with an automatic bid to the BCS, so right now that looks like TCU. (Said team also gets a Rose Bowl bid if Oregon wins out.) Right now I think Boise is still in, but other folks doing this sort of thing have projected them out. But how bad will it look when a team they beat (Virginia Tech) is in a BCS bowl and they aren’t? Also, if I’m the Fiesta Bowl, I have to think that Boise is probably going to travel better than Stanford.
  • I actually had a glut of qualifying teams this week, as you can see by the extra MAC and C-USA teams I have sitting around at the bottom. Thanks the NCAA scrapping the “winning records must be picked first” rule, a 6-6 Iowa State will almost certainly get an at-large bid before an 8-4 Toledo team.
  • Some other notes: I could easily swap a few teams around here, like NC State and Florida State, for instance. Army, with a win over Kent State this weekend, could clink their first bowl berth since 1996. I hated to send Miami out to the Sun Bowl, but, well, someone’s got to go and I was running out of ACC teams to get picked in front of them. I still think Texas will make a bowl, just not a good one. Yes, Notre Dame’s not in. Hard to see them getting to 6-6 with games against Utah and USC left. And finally, I have no idea what the C-USA pecking order is. Those are almost guesses other than that I am desperately trying to avoid sending Southern Miss to the New Orleans Bowl yet again.

Bowl Predictions 2010: Week 3

Better late than never, here’s this week’s bowl predictions. They’ve actually been up for awhile, so let’s see if I can remember what I was planning on writing.

  • Auburn and Oregon continue to control their own destiny. The only thing #1 really gets is the first dibs on uniforms, which is probably a bigger deal to Oregon than it is to Auburn. Either way, as long as neither loses, they’re in good shape.
  • Now, if they do lose, well, a lot more variables come into play. If Oregon loses, then no one really is sure what will happen. If Auburn loses, it depends on who they lose to. If they lose to Alabama the general consensus is that such a win plus the SEC title would propel a 1-loss Crimson Tide to the title game.
  • In terms of TCU/Utah and Boise, there’s actually a chance one of them could be left out even if both finish in the top 5. Only the higher ranked of the two will get the auto-bid (likely to the Rose Bowl unless Oregon loses). The other will be at the mercy of the BCS at-large process. I don’t think the BCS bowls really want to risk the outrage if, say, a #4 Boise State is left out in the cold, but it could happen. (It has before.)
  • In other news, I still have no idea who is going to win the Big 12. This week’s guess is Oklahoma over Nebraska in the Big 12 title game, allowing Mizzou to get a BCS berth. Note that this berth could also go to a Big Ten at-large, like, say, Michigan State.
  • You may be interested to know that I have Michigan and Texas playing each other in the Texas Bowl.
  • I have one extra team this week, but it’s still kind of dicey. It mostly depends on how the mid-majors shake out, and at this point in the season I still don’t really have enough data to comb through and figure out which of those teams will reach the 6-win threshold. (See, for instance, the Sun Belt, where many teams enter conference play below .500 but then gradually claw their way up to 6-6.) As the season goes on, this gets much easier though.
  • Florida and GT in the Music City Bowl? I don’t care that they lost to Mississippi State and can’t offense their way out of a paper bag, I’d still say we’re like a three touchdown underdog.
  • Also, Hawaii is indeed the first confirmed team in a bowl game.

Bowl Predictions 2010: Week 2

Well, it’s week two of bowl prediction season and I still have no solid idea of what’s going on here. I’ll try to do some analysis, though. Let’s try some bullet points, but first here’s a link to the predictions:

  • Auburn and Oregon are the only two teams that control their BCS destiny at this point. If they both win out, they’re in. I feel pretty good about this one. If either of them loses, it’ll be chaos.
  • And even then, it’s not entirely clear what will happen behind Auburn and Oregon. I have no earthly idea who is going to win the Big 12. Right now I would say it will be Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Missouri. Mizzou plays Nebraska this weekend so that will at least let me figure out the likely divisional winners. Even then, I’m not sure Mizzou could beat OU twice. Right now, however, I am projecting the Tigers as the Big 12 champs.
  • As a reminder, the BCS bowls pick in this order: the bowls that lost teams to the championship game get to pick replacements first, followed by the rest of the bowls in reverse order (so this year, the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, and then Rose). Also, a mid-major team will almost certainly end up in the Rose. I think the TCU/Utah winner will jump Boise State in the BCS eventually, so that’s why I put them there.
  • The rest I feel okay about. This week I actually have extra teams, as each week of conference play also makes it easier to evaluate the non-BCS conferences. Still, though, I’m nervous about having Southern Miss and Troy in the New Orleans Bowl again, but at this point it’s too early to get concrete news on which way the bowls are leaning. Though I did read somewhere Notre Dame might not even get invited to the Champs Sports Bowl (in place of the Big East runner-up), but we’ll see.
  • Oh, speaking of the Big East, I’m projecting a three-way tie thanks to Syracuse upsetting West Virginia last weekend. It seemed like the most rational prediction at this point.
  • As much as I hate to admit this, I’d actually like to see Georgia and Clemson play each other. That’s a pretty longstanding rivalry that should be played every year but isn’t.

Anyway, this weekend holds even more intriguing matchups that will probably change everything again. So, until next time…

Bowl Predictions 2010: Week 1

Ordinarily, I use the first post of the year to go through my process and my thoughts on the individual bowls.

I won’t do that here, though, for two reasons.
1. I am really busy right now.
2. I have no idea what is going on.

Hopefully I’ll have something more substantive for week 2. In the meantime, enjoy. Oh, and yes, I am short a team. That could well happen this year!