New 40-bowl projections ahead of Thanksgiving

[Old School]

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2017/11/19/16675544/bowl-projections-2017-college-football-playoff-predictions


Let?s guess matchups for every bowl game, from the College Football Playoff on down.

by Jason Kirk <time class="c-byline__item" data-ui="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Nov 20, 2017, 9:40am EST

With two weeks of college football until the Playoff committee and various orange blazers give us our actual postseason, we?re left with a No. 4 scenario that might give the committee its hardest CFP choice yet.
Each week, I update a board of picks and results for every game on the schedule, then see which postseason that?d give us. Below are this week?s updated projections for every bowl game, which might change slightly once new College Football Playoff rankings come out on Tuesday. This is not an ?if the season ended today? picture; these are predictions on how it?ll look at the end.

</time><time class="c-byline__item" data-ui="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">College Football Playoff

• Championship (Atlanta): Oklahoma vs. Alabama
• Sugar (New Orleans): No. 1 Miami vs. No. 4 Alabama
• Rose (Pasadena, CA): No. 2 Oklahoma vs. No. 3 Auburn

Let?s say one-loss/undefeated ACC, Big 12, and SEC champs are in. Say the Pac-12 champ is out. Say Wisconsin would?ve been in, but Wisconsin loses the Big Ten title game to Ohio State. That?s three spots, with the fight for No. 4 possibly coming down to 11-1 Alabama vs. 11-2 Ohio State vs. 11-2 Clemson.
(Wisconsin?s already down at No. 5 IRL; you can?t jump from No. 5 to No. 4 by losing the Big Ten. Two-loss USC?s already ranked behind the Buckeyes and can?t close its resume with anything close to a win over Wisconsin.)

Some advanced stats that tend to track well with the committee?s rankings ? CPI, Strength of Record, and ESPN?s ?Game Control? stat ? prefer the Tide over the other two. So let?s say the committee would just say, ?Bama?s better,? and leave it at that.

So has Bama already clinched the Playoff, then? Well, let?s say Bama loses to Auburn by 30 (I?m not necessarily predicting this part) while Ohio State beats Wisconsin 59-0 (nor this, though this part has happened before) or Clemson loses very close. Then what?
If the committee became deadlocked on Alabama vs. Ohio State or Clemson, the Tide would lose the stated tiebreaker list:

1. OSU?s conference title and stronger overall schedule would do it, since they haven?t played each other or any common opponents.
2. Clemson wouldn?t have a conference title, but it would have a win over the team that beat Bama in this scenario (Auburn) and a tougher schedule.

I?ve gone back and forth, but right now, I think the committee might just do the simple thing and take the team that lost only once. Then again, that means letting one conference be the first two-bid league and be the first conference with a two-loss entrant. See? Going back and forth again.

Anyway, let?s say we get apologetic near-master heel Baker Mayfield vs. Nick Saban, an old man who yells at jeans, for the national title. We?ll revise soon anyway.
The rest of the New Year's Six

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• Peach (Atlanta): UCF vs. Georgia
• Orange (Miami): Clemson vs. Wisconsin
• Fiesta (Glendale, AZ): USC vs. Ohio State
• Cotton (Arlington, TX): Notre Dame vs. Penn State

The Orange gets the top non-CFP non-champs from the ACC and the Big Ten/SEC/Notre Dame.
The other three bowls here are committee pairings, based on the highest-ranked teams. The list of teams in the NY6 group are preeetty close to set (TCU, Washington State, and USF/Memphis obviously have shots), and now we?ll wait to see them shuffle amongst themselves.
Everything else

• Citrus (Orlando): Louisville vs. South Carolina
• Outback (Tampa): Michigan State vs. Mississippi State
• Liberty (Memphis): Iowa State vs. Missouri
• TaxSlayer (Jacksonville): Florida State vs. Texas A&M
• Arizona (Tucson): San Diego State vs. New Mexico State
• Music City (Nashville): Northwestern vs. Kentucky
• Sun (El Paso): Wake Forest vs. Arizona
• Belk (Charlotte): NC State vs. Utah*
• Alamo (San Antonio): TCU vs. Washington State
• Camping World (Orlando): Virginia Tech vs. Oklahoma State
• Military (Annapolis, MD): Virginia vs. Navy
• Texas (Houston): Texas vs. LSU
• Pinstripe (New York City): Boston College vs. Iowa
• Independence (Shreveport, LA): Southern Miss* vs. Appalachian State*
• Cactus (Tempe): Kansas State vs. Oregon
• Heart of Dallas: West Virginia vs. UCLA*
• Quick Lane (Detroit): Utah State* vs. CMU*
• Holiday (San Diego): Michigan vs. Washington
• Foster Farms (Santa Clara, CA): Purdue vs. Stanford
• Hawaii: WKU* vs. Fresno State
• Dollar General (Mobile): Toledo vs. Marshall*
• Armed Forces (Fort Worth): Army vs. UTSA
• Birmingham: Memphis vs. Arkansas State*
• Potato (Boise): WMU vs. Wyoming
• Bahamas: FIU vs. Ohio
• Gasparilla (St. Pete, FL): SMU vs. UAB
• Frisco (TX): Houston vs. UNLV*
• Boca Raton: USF vs. FAU
• Camellia (Montgomery, AL): NIU vs. Georgia State
• New Mexico (Albuquerque): North Texas vs. Colorado State
• Las Vegas: Boise State vs. Arizona State
• Cure (Orlando): Akron* vs. UL Lafayette
• New Orleans: Troy vs. Louisiana Tech

* = Filling another conference?s unfilled bid.

The biggest thing to keep in mind: These are not based entirely on current or final standings. Each conference has its own bowl rules, but bowl games prefer matchups that will bring in fans and make money, not bowl games that reward teams that played well. Often, those two things are the same. Often, they?re not.
As always, I apologize for overrating and/or underrating your team.
What do you think?

Let?s also tune these up a little after the first Playoff rankings come out on Tuesday.
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[#cruncher]

I don't have a good handle on this and this may be a little off topic, but I was really shocked at the number of underdogs that covered last year during bowl season (don't have exact records). I'm assuming a big part of that was because of the sheer number of games, which leads to a lot of teams just being 'not really interested.' I try to help my son in his pool every year and I really let him down last year. Don't know what others thoughts are about how to approach the bowls as far as the motivational factor goes, it sure seemed huge last year and I guess I underestimated it.