This could be the best college football bowl season ever. Consider, in our 4 team playoff system, 3 of the 4 teams (Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame) are UNDEFEATED.
Nothing like that has ever happened before. I don't even know the last time the top two teams in college football were undefeated and played each other for the championship. Only due to the new playoff system were we allowed to slot in all 3 of these undefeated teams. What a godsend.
Oklahoma is definitely a worthy 4th entry, with only one loss and a Heisman caliber quarterback. The playoff selection committee was in exact agreement with my projections this year.
The playoff is the most exciting it's ever been, but even the down-ticket games are thrilling. Undefeated UCF against strong-but-still-capable-of-losing LSU. How exciting will that be if UCF pulls another upset? I know their starting quarterback is out with a terrible injury, but their 2nd quarterback looked pretty darn good against Memphis. I wouldn't count UCF out.
Like people have mentioned before, the previous two times UCF went to a New Year's Six bowl, they won in huge upsets. What's stopping them this time?
The Rose Bowl has maintained a wonderful tradition, the Big 10 champion vs. the Pac 12 champion, Washington vs. Ohio State. This will be a great game.
Florida vs. Michigan in the Peach Bowl is a great way to assess the comparative strength of the Big 10 vs. the SEC.
And then we get into the more minor bowls, where the teams have very comparable records and all sorts of interesting cross-conference matchups:
10-2 Utah State vs. 9-3 North Texas
8-5 Northern Illinois vs. 10-3 UAB
7-5 San Diego State vs. 8-4 Ohio
7-5 South Florida vs. 8-4 Marshall
8-4 FIU vs. 7-5 Toledo
8-4 Temple vs. 7-5 Duke
7-5 Wisconsin vs. 7-5 Miami
6-6 Baylor vs. 6-6 Vanderbilt
7-5 Auburn vs. 6-6 Purdue
9-3 Syracuse vs. 8-3 West Virginia
7-5 South Carolina vs. 7-5 Virginia
8-4 Stanford vs. 7-6 Pittsburgh
7-5 Michigan State vs. 8-4 Missouri
8-5 Northwestern vs. 9-4 Utah
8-4 Texas A&M vs. 9-3 NC State
8-4 Mississippi State vs. 8-4 Iowa
9-3 Penn State vs. 9-3 Kentucky
Look at the parity!
All these teams can prove, or disprove, the quality of their conference, because they're all going against a comparable team with a comparable record from another conference. At the end of the year we'll not only know who won the national championship, but who won bragging rights for the relative worth of the ten conferences that criss-cross the land.
Every conference got a sizable assemblage of representatives. Even the Sun Belt got 5 entries. The American conference got 7 bowl teams to go out and prove they're really part of the Power 6 instead of the Group of 5. What a thrilling narrative that would be if they pulled through.
This is always the best part of the year. Bowl Season, the NFL Playoffs, and finally March Madness all in a row. I can't wait to get this party started.
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