We have already had a couple of them if anyone noticed. Over the next couple weeks will be a bunch more.
First round of the playoff will be 12/20-12/21 Best of those games looks to be Tennessee vs. Ohio State. Winner gets Oregon. Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day has not been able to beat Michigan lately, if he loses this one strange to say with his record but his seat may be getting warm.
Most interesting might be Notre Dame and Indiana with the winner getting Georgia. The Irish are perennially overrated, Indiana has almost forever been a basketball school and a homecoming opponent in football.
Penn State, another school that has underachieved it’s reputation may have the easiest path with SMU then Boise
Round 2 is 12/31 - 1/1
Outside of the playoffs some of the bowls will end up looking ridiculous with players opting out for the Transfer Portal or the Draft and some coaches on the move.
The first one involving teams that matter is Tuesday 12/17 with Memphis and West Virginia meeting in beautiful Frisco TX.
Friday 12/20 in the Gasparilla (whatever a Gasparilla is?) Florida gets Tulane. Tulane is one of the better G5 schools and was ranked much of the year. Florida struggled to get started and fans were calling for Billy Napier’s head. Can he afford to lose this one even if it is meaningless otherwise.
Friday 12/27 is underachievers day. First is the Las Vegas Bowl. USC which barely qualified after being a media darling with Lincoln Riley against Texas A&M with it’s NIL budget larger than the GDP of some small countries. This is not what Aggies fans paid all that money to see. Even with the opt outs this is likely a blowout with SC folding like a soggy napkin.
Not to be left out, Oklahoma, which talked a big game before going 2-6 in their first year in the SEC might just get embarrassed by a quality Navy team.
Saturday 12/28 we have the Buffs in the Alamo bowl but we also get the Sheep from Fort Collins playing Miami in the Arizona Bowl. Not the Miami from Florida with a real team, instead the MAC version from Ohio. The full name of this bowl is the “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl presented by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop.” Somehow when thinking of Snoop and Dre, Colorado State isn’t the first thing to come to mind. No matter, the game is on CW so even if they wanted to half the country wouldn’t be able to find it to watch.
It used to be that a bowl game was a reward for a good season, a chance to go someplace warm to enjoy the sunshine over the holiday season. Now we have the baseball stadium games in New York and Boston, a game in Detroit, and a game outside in Boise Idaho. Some player gets hit hard enough and seeing the purple turf in the snow may seem like a bad psychedelic dream.
The New York game features Boston College against Nebraska. Cornhuskers fans waited for years for this? It’s not warm, there’s no place to park the RV, and meth isn’t the drug of choice.
Still trying to decide which is the most ridiculous, a bowl with the winning coach doused in mayonaise, a bowl with the winning team eating a giant pop-tart, a bowl sponsored by frosted flakes, or the LA bowl hosted by Gronk, which last year was the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl.
First round of the playoff will be 12/20-12/21 Best of those games looks to be Tennessee vs. Ohio State. Winner gets Oregon. Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day has not been able to beat Michigan lately, if he loses this one strange to say with his record but his seat may be getting warm.
Most interesting might be Notre Dame and Indiana with the winner getting Georgia. The Irish are perennially overrated, Indiana has almost forever been a basketball school and a homecoming opponent in football.
Penn State, another school that has underachieved it’s reputation may have the easiest path with SMU then Boise
Round 2 is 12/31 - 1/1
Outside of the playoffs some of the bowls will end up looking ridiculous with players opting out for the Transfer Portal or the Draft and some coaches on the move.
The first one involving teams that matter is Tuesday 12/17 with Memphis and West Virginia meeting in beautiful Frisco TX.
Friday 12/20 in the Gasparilla (whatever a Gasparilla is?) Florida gets Tulane. Tulane is one of the better G5 schools and was ranked much of the year. Florida struggled to get started and fans were calling for Billy Napier’s head. Can he afford to lose this one even if it is meaningless otherwise.
Friday 12/27 is underachievers day. First is the Las Vegas Bowl. USC which barely qualified after being a media darling with Lincoln Riley against Texas A&M with it’s NIL budget larger than the GDP of some small countries. This is not what Aggies fans paid all that money to see. Even with the opt outs this is likely a blowout with SC folding like a soggy napkin.
Not to be left out, Oklahoma, which talked a big game before going 2-6 in their first year in the SEC might just get embarrassed by a quality Navy team.
Saturday 12/28 we have the Buffs in the Alamo bowl but we also get the Sheep from Fort Collins playing Miami in the Arizona Bowl. Not the Miami from Florida with a real team, instead the MAC version from Ohio. The full name of this bowl is the “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl presented by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop.” Somehow when thinking of Snoop and Dre, Colorado State isn’t the first thing to come to mind. No matter, the game is on CW so even if they wanted to half the country wouldn’t be able to find it to watch.
It used to be that a bowl game was a reward for a good season, a chance to go someplace warm to enjoy the sunshine over the holiday season. Now we have the baseball stadium games in New York and Boston, a game in Detroit, and a game outside in Boise Idaho. Some player gets hit hard enough and seeing the purple turf in the snow may seem like a bad psychedelic dream.
The New York game features Boston College against Nebraska. Cornhuskers fans waited for years for this? It’s not warm, there’s no place to park the RV, and meth isn’t the drug of choice.
Still trying to decide which is the most ridiculous, a bowl with the winning coach doused in mayonaise, a bowl with the winning team eating a giant pop-tart, a bowl sponsored by frosted flakes, or the LA bowl hosted by Gronk, which last year was the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl.
