Come and get ’em!

Okay, this is the second-to-last edition. We’ve even got our first confirmed pairing: UAB vs. Ohio in the Bahamas Bowl. (Welcome back, Blazers!) But we’ve also got more chaos than ever in the playoff picture. Let’s talk about that, bullet-point style.

• Here’s the not-controversial part, maybe other than where they’re ranked: ACC champion, SEC champion, Oklahoma if they beat TCU in the Big 12 championship.
• So that’s the three. Who’s the fourth? Well, if Wisconsin beats Ohio State in the Big Ten championship, then there’s no debate that undefeated Wisconsin will be in. But what if Ohio State beats Wisconsin? Does 2-loss Big Ten champ Ohio State get in over 1-loss Alabama? The arguments are otherwise very similar, but Ohio State has an edge over Alabama in terms of strength-of-schedule (reminder, Alabama’s best win is LSU) and a conference championship.
• So this is why I’m projecting #1 Auburn vs. #4 Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl and #2 Auburn vs. #3 Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl.
• Alabama, as the highest ranked team from the SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame, would get an Orange Bowl bid, matched against Miami.
• The other notable thing is that with the loss to Pitt, I had a hard time putting Notre Dame in the New Year’s Six over TCU. I’m not completely sure on this, but I think a three-loss Notre Dame will drop like a rock in the rankings.
• Alabama would have to go to the Orange as per the rules, assuming Georgia falls below them if they lose to Auburn in the SEC championship. The Committee may send UGA out west instead of putting them in Atlanta for the 3rd time in just over a month, but I think if the Peach winds up with Central Florida they’ll want a strong local draw.

Other news and notes:

• Currently there are 79 bowl eligible teams, and I’m projecting Florida State and New Mexico State to get eligible this weekend, for a total of 81. With the demise of the Poinsettia Bowl, that means there’s 78 bids available, so there’s three extra teams.
• With the SEC getting 3 teams into the New Year’s Six, that leaves less than 7 SEC teams available for their top-tier berths. I have the Liberty Bowl getting the short end of the stick.
• The Pac-12, meanwhile, has the opposite problem. They have only 5 berths after the NY6, and I’m projecting only the Pac-12 champion to get in. They 9 total eligible teams, though, so I’m figuring Utah and UCLA will be left out. A tweet indicated that Independence Bowl representatives were at the UCLA-Cal game Saturday, but that would require a swap to be arranged since the Independence has an arrangement with Conference-USA already. 
• With Notre Dame not getting into the NY6, I have them pipping the first available ACC bowl slot, bumping everyone else down a spot. I wound up putting newly eligible Duke in the Birmingham Bowl.
• Even if they’ve been there a lot recently, I think Oklahoma State is the most exciting option for the Alamo Bowl from the Big 12.
• If the Big 12 gets both Oklahoma and TCU in the NY6, that really dashes the chances of Texas in the Texas Bowl against Texas A&M.
• I didn’t want to send Stanford to San Diego for the second time this season (they played at San Diego State back in September), but I think the Holiday will like getting a Stanford team that’s finished strong down there. And the weather everywhere in California is nice, but San Diego it’s always just that much nicer.

That’s it for now. I expect some other minor bids to be announced during the week, and that I will have to hustle to get a new set of projections out this Saturday to stay ahead of the news. Until then!

Get ’em while they’re fresh.

Reflecting the general lack of, well, anything in college football’s Week 12, there were a handful of changes, but not a lot at the top. I did shuffle around some CFP-controlled bowl spots, but nothing too major. I also brought the Texas-Texas A&M Texas Bowl back because I could.

There were scattered bits of news that I was able to find, the main thing being that Boise State will probably go to the Las Vegas Bowl if they win the Mountain West, which figures but last year they were allowed to go to Cactus Bowl to get a better matchup, so these sorts of things happen sometimes.

One other thing: I had 79 teams thanks to Florida State scheduling an extra game to get to 6-6, which I didn’t realize until I did all the predictions originally. I slotted them in, but I’d expect more accurate results next week. Until then!

They’re all right here. Let’s have a chat real quick about the logic this week.

Concerning the playoff, well here was my thought process. I have Alabama defeating Georgia in the SEC championship, Clemson defeating Miami, and Oklahoma defeating TCU or Oklahoma State. So there’s your top three. If Wisconsin beats Ohio State, then they’ll be in as well. But… what if they don’t? Obviously, if we’ve learned anything this season, counting on a particular version of the Buckeyes to show up for any game is fraught with danger, but nonetheless I like the Buckeyes to win. Surveying the other teams who would’ve just lost (like Georgia) versus the Big Ten champion, even a two-loss champion, well, it was hard to leave the Buckeyes out. Their reward, of course, would be getting to play Alabama, so good luck with that.

In other news, I just barely had enough teams. With the Big Ten still probably getting three teams into the Playoff-affiliated bowls, this leaves the rest of the Big Ten’s bowls sorely wanting. And that’s pretty much how you get UCLA in the Pinstripe Bowl. Elsewhere, I had to abandon my Texas-Texas A&M bowl game, but hey, there’s always next year (or next week).

Otherwise, things are getting progressively more real. Expect even more details next week, which is when I start looking for actual news to inform my predictions instead of, you know, guesses.

I’m just going to post the link because I am so very tired. Thanks for understanding. We’ll be back in force for the preview later this week and bowl predictions next week.

Week 2 of the predictions are hot-and-ready. I waited until after the release of the first Playoff Committee rankings, which I generally use to get an idea of how they’re thinking, at least at this early juncture.

It’s still a bit too early to get too far into the weeds on details, so let’s just hit the salient points for now:

• I’m predicting that Alabama defeats Georgia in the SEC championship, that Clemson wins out, Ohio State wins out, and Notre Dame wins out. Which put me in a bind for the last spot in the playoff. Notre Dame would have one loss, that 20-19 loss to Georgia back in September. Georgia would have that win, but also a very recent loss to Alabama in the SEC championship. Humans are prone to recency bias, which hurts Georgia’s chances, but (unfortunately) Georgia’s wins over Notre Dame and Auburn would be better than Notre Dame’s best two wins in this scenario (probably the wins over Southern Cal and NC State). 
• I actually did have 80 teams this time, which was nice. You can also see my running tally of eligible teams, and we’re already nearly halfway there.
• There are more than a few teams that will only have 11 games, and I wonder if worse comes to worse the NCAA will allow 5-6 teams to be picked ahead of 5-7 teams that get in on APR or if they’ll just still be eligible. (Of course, this never came up back when the season was only, you know, 11 games, but there were a lot less bowl games back then.)
• At least once each year I predict Texas and Texas A&M will play in a Texas-based bowl, and while I realize that it probably won’t happen, it’s fun to think about.