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With the college football season coming to a close, it’s more than time to look forward to the postseason. With the Washington Huskies losing this week, it appears as though the Pac-12 will be left out of the College Football Playoff team this season.
It’s bad for the conference, but good for projections.
The conference has seven automatic tie-ins with bowls, but what happens if more teams than that win six games?
As of right now, 11 of the 12 teams in the conference have a chance at playing in the postseason, which would be a first since conference expansion in 2011. I don’t necessarily think that happens, but there’s a greater than zero chance it does.
Jason Kirk of the mothership (SBNation.com) published his projections on Sunday, which had eight teams in, leaving out Cal, Colorado and ASU and putting UCLA in the Heart of Dallas Bowl, replacing the Conference USA tie-in.
However, I see things playing out a little differently. Let’s take a look at where he and I differ:
Bowl Projections
| Bowl | Jason Kirk | Matthew Tonis |
|---|---|---|
| Bowl | Jason Kirk | Matthew Tonis |
| New Years 6 | USC | USC |
| Alamo Bowl | Washington | Washington State |
| Holiday Bowl | Arizona | Washington |
| Foster Farms Bowl | Washington State | Arizona |
| Sun Bowl | Oregon | UCLA |
| Las Vegas Bowl | Stanford | Stanford |
| Cactus Bowl | Utah | ASU |
Right off the bat, Kirk and I have a different view of who will win the Pac-12 North, as I’m a believer in Washington State, especially coming off a bye, to top Washington in the Apple Cup in Seattle for the first time since 2007.
Stanford gets a tough break, having played in the Sun Bowl a season ago, so they get shifted down to the Las Vegas Bowl. With the open slot for four .500 teams, I think the Sun Bowl would take the star power of Josh Rosen and the UCLA Bruins over ASU, Colorado and Utah.
All three remaining teams are in the South, making for relatively easy travel to Phoenix, but I feel like ASU would be the easy choice for the selection committee to take since the game takes place just down the road from campus.
That leaves the Buffaloes and Utes out in the cold for conference bowl games. They’ll likely head to a bowl toward the bottom of the ACC or SEC slate, like the Birmingham Bowl or the Independence Bowl or the aforementioned Heart of Dallas Bowl.