In my last article, I gave a brevity-influenced one sentence preview for the bowl games beginning this Saturday with the New Orleans Bowl and going all the way to the following Saturday. Now it’s time to finish this up with the rest of the lineup, culminating with the College Football Playoff semifinals and national championship game. It works out pretty well since there are 18 bowls over the first eight days I covered previously, with 21 more to get analyzed here.
The bowls take a one-day hiatus on Sunday, December 29th to make way for the final week of the NFL regular season but get right back to business the next day. That’s where part two of this single sentence synopsis begins. All of the non-CFP bowls will be previewed first before I finish up with the two semifinals and predict who I think will end up in Arlington 11 days later. Without building it up too much by rambling away, let’s get to business.
As was mentioned in part one, all games are televised by ESPN unless otherwise indicated.
Autozone Liberty Bowl (December 29th, 2 pm): Texas A&M vs. West Virginia
A former Big 12 team faces a current one in Memphis and both teams come into the game having had their fair share of ups and downs on the season but ultimately finishing 7-5 which was more of a disappointment for the Aggies than the Mountaineers.
Russell Athletic Bowl (December 29th, 5:30 pm): Oklahoma vs. Clemson
Oklahoma started the season ranked fourth in the AP poll so definitely weren’t expected to finish the season in a middle tier bowl game in Orlando facing Clemson who started slow but finished respectably with a blowout of their hated rival South Carolina.
Advocare V100 Texas Bowl (December 29th, 9 pm): Arkansas vs. Texas
These two teams were actually conference foes for over 80 years in the old Southwest Conference before Arkansas left for the SEC in 1991 and both look to continue their rebuilding process with a win in this game.
Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl (December 30th, 3 pm): Notre Dame vs. LSU
The Fighting Irish were a play away from upsetting Florida State but since then their season has precipitously collapsed, and they now limp into Nashville having to figure out a way to slow down one of the nation’s best young running backs in LSU’s Leonard Fournette.
Belk Bowl (December 30th, 6:30 pm): Georgia vs. Louisville
The home of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers gets one of the best non-New Year’s Day bowl match-ups and the underlying theme should be the stout Georgia running game butting heads with the Cardinals top-five run defense.
Foster Farms Bowl (December 30th, 10 pm): Maryland vs. Stanford
On paper, this is the most lopsided of the bowls with the Cardinal favored by as much as two touchdowns and many ESPN pundits giving Stanford their highest confidence pick on that Bowl Mania preview show.
Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl (New Year’s Eve, 12:30 pm): TCU vs. Ole Miss
The New Year’s Six bowls begin with our first prominent glance at whether or not the Finebaum-esque SEC chauvinists will continue to gloat over the conference’s dominance as one of the “first two out” of the CFP, TCU, faces the third place team out of the SEC West.
Vizio Fiesta Bowl (New Year’s Eve, 4 pm): Boise State vs. Arizona
The Broncos finished as the highest ranked Group of Five team and as such automatically qualified for a New Year’s Six game and look to make it 3-0 all time in the Fiesta Bowl against an Arizona team trying to regroup after getting destroyed by CFP semifinalist Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.
Capital One Orange Bowl (New Year’s Eve, 8:30 pm):
The state of Mississippi had a breakout year in college football as both SEC schools from the state find themselves in a major bowl including the Bulldogs who’ll have to deal with the always hard to prepare for triple option of Georgia Tech.
Outback Bowl (New Year’s Day, noon, ESPN2): Auburn vs. Wisconsin
The Badgers unexpected coaching change, their second in three years, coupled with the after effects of the beat down they suffered in the Big Ten title game at Ohio State’s hands might make it difficult for them to focus on Nick Marshall, Sammie Coates and a high powered Auburn offense.
Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic (New Year’s Day, 12:30 pm): Baylor vs. Michigan State
Both of these teams coaches certainly have the right to play the “us against the world” card for this clash, in Art Briles’ case due to the fact that Baylor was left out of the CFP despite a worthy resumé and in the case of Mark Dantonio because…well…that’s what he likes to do all the time anyways.
Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl (New Year’s Day, 1 pm, ABC): Minnesota vs. Missouri
This bowl is one of my personal favorites since I used to live in Orlando and have been in the stadium for this game many times, and this year’s edition is another one of those measuring stick games as it relates to whether the Big Ten has caught up in any noticeable way with the big, bad SEC.
Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl (January 2nd, noon): Houston vs. Pittsburgh
Though Houston let head coach Tony Levine go last week, the program should be feeling pretty good about itself after hiring perhaps the best young offensive mind out there in Ohio State offensive coordinator Tom Herman, while Pittsburgh will probably have hired a new coach by the time this game is played as well given Paul Chryst is likely on his way to Wisconsin.
TaxSlayer Bowl (January 2nd, 3:20 pm): Iowa vs. Tennessee
Tennessee appears to be headed in the right direction under second year coach Butch Jones, especially on the recruiting trail, and a win in Jacksonville over Kirk Ferentz (incidentally the longest tenured head coach in the Big Ten) and the Hawkeyes will further confirm the upward trajectory of the program.
Valero Alamo Bowl (January 2nd, 6:45 pm): UCLA vs. Kansas State
Both the Bruins and Wildcats come into this game having lost their season finale but UCLA have to be the most miffed about the manner of their defeat, coming out flat against a 6-5 Stanford team in the Rose Bowl with a spot in the Pac-12 championship game on the line.
TicketCity Cactus Bowl (January 2nd, 10:15 pm): Washington vs. Oklahoma State
The day-after-New Year’s quadruple-header on ESPN concludes in Tempe with Oklahoma State sneaking into bowl eligibility with a wild Bedlam Game win over Oklahoma and will be hard pressed to get the offense going against a Huskies defense stacked with special talents such as linebackers Shaq Thompson and Hau’oli Kikaha.
Birmingham Bowl (January 3rd, noon): Florida vs. East Carolina
There are a multitude of reasons why Will Muschamp will not be returning to Gainesville next season and the fact the Gators are playing their bowl game in Birmingham this season is one of them but they’ll have their hands full with quarterback Shane Carden and a talented ECU team that harbored their own Group of Five New Year’s Six hopes early on in the season.
GoDaddy Bowl (January 4th, 9 pm): Toledo vs. Arkansas State
This MAC-Sun Belt showdown has become a regular fixture as the penultimate game before the big one and continues that role in 2015 as the Rockets and Red Wolves meet in Sunday prime time at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile.
And now, for the big ones, the College Football Playoff semifinals and national final.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF
Semifinal Pairings
ROSE BOWL GAME PRESENTED BY NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL (New Year’s Day, 5 pm): (2) Oregon vs. (3) Florida State
For only the third time in college football history, two Heisman Trophy winners will meet in a bowl game as this year’s recipient Marcus Mariota looks to out duel 2013 winner Jameis Winston, hand Florida State their first loss in 29 games and advance the Ducks to the final.
ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL (New Year’s Day, 8:30 pm): (1) Alabama vs. (4) Ohio State
Despite being down to their third quarterback of the year in Cardale Jones, the Buckeyes are riding a whirlwind of momentum after stomping Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game, but will need all the help they can get against the Crimson Tide who are rolling themselves with a potent offense, Heisman finalist wideout Amari Cooper, and a run defense that shuts opposing team’s rushing attacks down.
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP PREDICTION
In the end, I think Florida State’s “by the skin of their teeth” method of winning comes to an end, OSU’s quarterback inexperience prevents them from advancing and Oregon clashes with Bama at Jerry’s palace in Dallas where Mariota and the Ducks win their first national title and demonstrate to the college football universe that, slowly but surely, the Pac-12 is making inroads on the SEC’s dominance of the sport.
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