Yes, it’s finally time to put our figurative neck on the line and make our selections for the winners of not only the 37 “meaningless exhibition” bowl games in the FBS (“football BOWL subdivision”) but also their two championship semifinals and the national championship games; PLUS the semis in the FCS and the finals in Divisions 2 and 3 college football!
(By the way, in the spirit of anti-commercialism, we won’t be putting all the sponsor names on the. Owls unless that’s the only designation the bowl has. Those change almost yearly and leads to confusion about which game is which. Ok? We squared away, bro?)
So let’s begin!
Games We’re Absolutely Sure About:
The winner for Most Obvious Rout goes to the Boca Raton Bowl on Dec 19, between a 7-6 Akron team that’s only bowl eligible because it plays in the weakest division in football, against an undefeated in conference Florida Atlantic team that’s wrecked everything in its path the last two months. Oh! And the game will be played on FAU’s home field, too! We predict a three touchdown victory for the Owls.
Our other certainties? In descending order, Florida State over Southern Miss (Dec 27, Independence Bowl); North Carolina State over the disaster that is Arizona State (Dec 29, Sun Bowl); Northwestern over Kentucky (Dec 29, Music City Bowl); and Arkansas State over Middle Tennessee (Dec 16, Camellia Bowl).
Games with a Clear Favorite:
We’ll hit these in chronological order, since there are so many of them -
Dec 16, New Orleans Bowl: Troy over North Texas (the Green are good, but the Trojans are a league apart).
Dec 16, New Mexico Bowl: Colorado State over Marshall.
Dec 22, Bahamas Bowl: Ohio U over the best story in football, the 8-4 Alabama-Birmingham Dragons, back from the dead and in a bowl after two years dormant. Alas, Ohio is just better than they are.
Dec 23, Birmingham Bowl: South Florida over Texas Tech.
Dec 23, Armed Forces Bowl: San Diego State over Army-West Point. (There’ll be a LOT of running in this game!)
Dec 27, Pinstripe Bowl: Iowa over Boston College by three points. Strange to say it that way, but the universal opinion is that the Hawkeyes are three points better than the Eagles.
Dec 27, Texas Bowl: Missouri over Texas. Mizzou found a switch mid year and is as good as anyone in the country all of a sudden.
Dec 28, Camping World Bowl (gag): Oklahoma State over Virginia Tech. Tech’s good, but the Cowpokes are better.
Dec 29, Arizona Bowl: Utah State over New Mexico State. It’s been 57 years since NMSU has been in a bowl game, but unfortunately it will end the same way it did in 1960 - losing to Utah State.
Dec 30, TaxSlayer Bowl (gag): Louisville over Mississippi State. Lamar Jackson in probably his final collegiate game.
Dec 30, Liberty Bowl: Memphis over Iowa State, in a home game for the 11-2 Tigers.
Dec 30, Orange Bowl (a New Year’s Six game): Wisconsin over Miami of Florida.
Games That We’re Willing To Pick A Winner For:
Again, for the sake of clarity, we’ll go in chronological order...
Dec 16, Celebration Bowl: North Carolina A&T over Grambling State. The battle for HBC supremacy should go to the undefeated Aggies, who have only had two opponents come within a touchdown of them all season.
Dec 16, Cure Bowl: Western Kentucky over Georgia State. Two six-win teams that really shouldn’t have bowl bids. WKU isn’t very good, but they’re better than GSU is.
Dec 23, Dollar General Bowl (ew): Two good teams, Toledo over Appalachian State.
Dec 24, Hawaii Bowl: Fresno State over Houston.
Dec 26, Quick Lane Bowl (sigh): Duke over Northern Illinois. A mediocre Power 5 team should defeat a mediocre Group of 5 team.
Dec 26, Cactus Bowl: Kansas State over UCLA.
Dec 28, Holiday Bowl: Always a good matchup. Michigan State should defeat Washington State.
Dec 29, Belk Bowl: Wake Forest over Texas A&M. Continuity wins out.
Dec 29, Cotton Bowl (a New Year’s Six game): Potentially one of the very best games of the season, Ohio State should be too much for Southern Cal. Should be...
Jan 1, Outback Bowl (the restaurant that claims to be Australian): Michigan is probably stronger than South Carolina. Probably...
Games We Picked With Our Fingers Crossed:
These six are tough; you could argue any of them the other way and I wouldn’t be upset.
Dec 20, Frisco Bowl: SMU over Louisiana Tech.
Dec 22, Idaho Potato Bowl (on the blue turf in Boise, my home stadium) Wyoming over Central Michigan. I’d been on the fence about this one but the stronger conference argument won me over.
Dec 26, Heart of Dallas Bowl: Utah over West Virginia. Hard to know, but it seems to me that Utah travels better.
Dec 28, Military Bowl (as opposed to “Armed Forces Bowl”. Yeah, there are too many bowls...): Naval Academy over Virginia. Although the Virginia that beat Boise in September would roll over Navy...
Dec 30, Fiesta Bowl (a New Year’s Six Bowl): Penn State over Washington, but I’m not at ALL sure about that. I’m going off last year’s bowl performances and betting against coach Petersen for the first time in my life.
Jan 1, Peach Bowl (also a New Year’s Six game): the annual token appearance of a Group Of Fice power against a real test from the Power Five. And Auburn will be a REAL test for Central Florida. We’re taking a strong Auburn team that beat both Alabama and Georgia, but UCF isn’t undefeated for nothing.
Games We’re Flipping a Coin Over:
These five are toss ups that we’ve almost arbitrarily chosen one team because we had to...
Oregon over Boise State (Dec 16, Las Vegas Bowl).
Temple over Florida International (Dec 21, Gaspsrilla Bowl).
Arizona over Purdue (Dec 27, Foster Farms Bowl).
TCU over Stanford (Dec 28, Alamo Bowl).
Notre Dame over LSU (Jan 1, Citrus Bowl).
The Championship Four(s):
FBS - in the Jan 1 Sugar Bowl, the rubber match between Clemson and Alabama will determine one finalist (we like ‘Bama by three, but the majority of pundits pick Clemson in a close one). Meanwhile, the Rose Bowl between Oklahoma and Georgia is a virtual tossup, even in Vegas, where the point spread has crossed from one team the the other more than once. (We also have a tie.) This should be a dandy!
FCS - we are one game away from the final everyone wants! #1 James Madison will host #5 South Dakota State this Friday (we pick JMU by five), and #2 North Dakota State hosts #6 Sam Houston State on Saturday (we pick NDSU by a full 17 points!). The winners meet in Frisco, Texas, on January 6th, for the FCS national title.
Division II - Texas A&M-Commerce has the unenviable task of facing off against the lovable second-year program from the powerful Gulf Coast Conference, West Florida, which has ripped through higher seeds all the way to the national final. We're not going against West Florida again!
Division III - here, we got our wish: Mary-Hardin-Baylor is going to defend their national title in the final against perennial champion Mount Union this Saturday. We can’t wait!
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