Bowl Preview

Hey football fans! The bowl season starts tomorrow. I better get my bowl preview out before it’s too late!

Below you will find basic information for each bowl including: name (I didn’t have room for all of the wacky sponsors, sorry), favorite, underdog, line based on the current version of my rankings, probability of an upset and date for the game.   

That’s an awful lot of information and, to help you out, I thought I would summarize a few interesting points:

• I’m sure you’re all interested in what I have to say about the National Championship Game. The rankings have not been a fan of Auburn all season and, not surprisingly, I have Oregon as a ten point favorite over Auburn. The national perception is that the Pac 10 did not have a good year but my rankings have the strength of the Pac 10 as nearly equal to the strength of the SEC. Combine that with the fact that Oregon didn’t play many close games, compared to Auburn, who had several close calls, and you can see why my rankings have Oregon as the solid favorite.
• There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for this year’s BCS match-ups but the rankings do not see these games being as competitive as last year. Oregon and Oklahoma are favored by ten and fourteen points, respectively, and only the Rose Bowl has a line of less than five (TCU by 4.76). In contrast, none of last year’s games had a ten point spread (the Sugar Bowl was close at 9.74), three of the games had smaller spread than this year’s Rose Bowl and two were expected to be closer than a field goal.
• A lower-tier bowl that’s drawing a lot of attention is the Las Vegas Bowl, which features Boise State and Utah. Boise and Utah have been the strongest non-BCS conference teams of the BCS era. Both team’s regular seasons ended in disappointment. It will be interesting to see who rebounds for a good bowl showing. The rankings think it will be the Broncos by fourteen.
• Presented without comment: this year, there are 35 bowls, meaning that 70 of the 120 Bowl subdivision teams are above average.
• The title sponsors get wackier every year. Last year, my favorite was easily the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl. Beef ‘O’ Brady’s is back but there are several other great options this season. The AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl is a classic (AdvoCare V100 is a diet supplement) and the BBVA Compass Bowl is pretty good too (until year realize that BBVA Compass is a holding company and not a compass manufacturer), but the title of best sponsor is clearly a dogfight between the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl and the Military Bowl Presented by Northrop Grumman. (Do I lose points for the bad pun?)

Happy Holidays! Enjoy the bowl season!

Bowl	Favorite	Underdog	Line	P(Upset)	Date
BCS National Championship Game	Oregon	Auburn	10.02	0.244	1/10/11
Sugar Bowl	Ohio State	Arkansas	6.53	0.326	1/4/11
Orange Bowl	Stanford	Virginia Tech	8.22	0.285	1/3/11
Fiesta Bowl	Oklahoma	Connecticut	14.08	0.165	1/1/11
Rose Bowl	TCU	Wisconsin	4.76	0.371	1/1/11
Cotton Bowl	LSU	Texas A&M	2.02	0.444	1/7/11
Capital One Bowl	Alabama	Michigan State	14.23	0.162	1/1/11
Gator Bowl	Mississippi State	Michigan	4.28	0.384	1/1/11
Outback Bowl	Florida	Penn State	8.65	0.275	1/1/11
Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl	Nevada	Boston College	8.47	0.279	1/9/11
BBVA Compass Bowl	Pittsburgh	Kentucky	7.39	0.305	1/8/11
GoDaddy.com Bowl	Middle Tennessee State	Miami (Ohio)	0.22	0.494	1/6/11
TicketCity Bowl	Texas Tech	Northwestern	6.92	0.316	1/1/11
Chick-fil-A Bowl	Florida State	South Carolina	2.68	0.426	12/31/10
Liberty Bowl	Georgia	Central Florida	9.81	0.249	12/31/10
Sun Bowl	Miami (Fla.)	Notre Dame	4.33	0.382	12/31/10
Meineke Car Care Bowl	Clemson	South Florida	6.65	0.323	12/31/10
Holiday Bowl	Nebraska	Washington	14.04	0.166	12/30/10
Music City Bowl	North Carolina	Tennessee	2.64	0.428	12/30/10
Pinstripe Bowl	Kansas State	Syracuse	4.76	0.371	12/30/10
Armed Forces Bowl	SMU	Army	3.27	0.41	12/30/10
Alamo Bowl	Oklahoma State	Arizona	2.53	0.431	12/29/10
Texas Bowl	Illinois	Baylor	3.44	0.406	12/29/10
Military Bowl	Maryland	East Carolina	14.12	0.164	12/29/10
Insight Bowl	Missouri	Iowa	0.44	0.488	12/28/10
Champs Sports Bowl	West Virginia	North Carolina State	2.29	0.437	12/28/10
Independence Bowl	Air Force	Georgia Tech	1.73	0.452	12/27/10
Little Ceasers Bowl	Toledo	Florida International	1.02	0.472	12/26/10
Hawaii Bowl	Hawaii	Tulsa	6.96	0.315	12/24/10
Poinsettia Bowl	Navy	San Diego State	2.17	0.44	12/23/10
Las Vegas Bowl	Boise State	Utah	14.67	0.155	12/22/10
St. Petersburg Bowl	Louisville	Southern Mississippi	2.79	0.423	12/21/10
New Orleans Bowl	Troy	Ohio	0.04	0.499	12/18/10
Humanitarian Bowl	Northern Illinois	Fresno State	6.35	0.33	12/18/10
New Mexico Bowl	BYU	UTEP	14.71	0.154	12/18/10

Full week 14 rankings can be found at my personal website:

www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/wk14_ranking_report.pdf