Final 2015 SEC bowl projections
Florida finally managed to score an offensive touchdown after doing without for eight regulation quarters.
Still, it wasn’t enough to unseat the Alabama Crimson Tide. And with that, the Gators slipped from a 10-1 College Football Playoff wild card 15 days ago to 10-3 and unlikely to represent the SEC in the Sugar Bowl.
Due to the team’s stiff decline — let’s call it the Treon Harris effect — Florida falls to the Citrus Bowl, while a surging Ole Miss gets sweet in the Sugar.
The only drama at the top Sunday will involve the College Football Playoff seeds. Most expect the committee to leave Clemson and Alabama at No. 1 and No. 2.
Michigan State beat Oregon in its non-conference schedule, played in the more difficult Big Ten division and traveled to Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio State (at the time unbeaten and the defending national champion). Add in a victory against previously-unbeaten Iowa, and the Spartans should get the No. 3 seed ahead of Oklahoma due to strength of schedule.
Now on to the lesser bowls. There are a lot of them. So many, in fact, that only 77 FBS teams won the requisite six games. Three teams will make a bowl game with a 5-7 record: Nebraska, Minnesota and … wait for it … San Jose State.
The NCAA rule states that if not enough teams reach six wins, bowls can invite football teams which rank in the top 5 in the nation in Academic Progress Rate. (APR is a weird number loosely based on graduation rates. You can learn more about the formula here.)
But because the NCAA wrongly assumed nerds can’t play football — all five teams were bowl-eligible this year — the selection process entered a gray area before everyone just decided to use APR rankings, even if it meant going further down the list.
Thus, Nebraska got a bowl invite, and then Missouri.
But Missouri announced last week that it would not accept a bowl bid, even though its APR would’ve ensured an invite. The team just named defensive coordinator Barry Odom as its next head coach. The Tigers would’ve been slated for a Dec. 26 game in Shreveport, La., about three weeks after Odom inherited Gary Pinkel’s job. It would’ve been a losing proposition for the school financially and would force the team to spend Christmas in a fairly inhospitable city, so it wisely said no thanks.
The relatively new pool system means the Citrus Bowl gets first dibs beyond the New Year’s Six bowls. It almost certainly will select Florida. Then there’s a pool of six games that all must claw and politic their way toward bowl matchups, followed by the Birmingham Bowl and Independence Bowl.
Because Mizzou declined, Auburn — the SEC’s only 6-6 team — almost certainly will play in the Birmingham Bowl, while the Independence Bowl (Dec. 26) will have to do without an SEC team.
This also ensures no SEC team will play in a bowl game until Dec. 29.
Whew. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are our final bowl projections. After the College Football Playoff selection show (noon ET, ESPN), the remainder of the bowl matchups should trickle out Sunday afternoon.
2015 SEC BOWL PROJECTIONS AFTER WEEK 14 (10 invites)
- College Football Playoff Semifinal (Cotton Bowl): No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Michigan State
- College Football Playoff Semifinal (Orange Bowl): No. 1 Clemson vs. No. 4 Oklahoma
- New Year’s Six Sugar: Ole Miss vs. Oklahoma State
- Citrus: Florida vs. Michigan
- Outback: Tennessee vs. Northwestern
- Music City: Texas A&M vs. Louisville
- Belk: Mississippi State vs. Virginia Tech
- Liberty: Arkansas vs. Kansas State
- TaxSlayer: Georgia vs. Penn State
- Texas: LSU vs. Texas Tech
- Birmingham: Auburn vs. Memphis
Will turn down a bowl: Missouri
On the outside looking in: Kentucky, South Carolina, Vanderbilt