Polls and Bowls

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Polls and Bowls

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November 14th

The Athletic: Heisman is “Travis Hunter’s to Lose”

From The Athletic …  It’s hard to overcome the quarterback advantage in the Heisman race. Quarterbacks touch the ball on every offensive play, and challengers from other positions must be record-settingly prolific just to have a chance at the trophy. But Travis Hunter found another avenue to an edge: Never leave the field.

Colorado’s two-way sensation has pole position for the award through 11 weeks at +100, comfortably ahead of Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, who leads a pack of four contenders who have separated from the rest of the field in the stretch run.

Hunter has been flat-out the best player in college football this season, and thanks to Colorado coalescing into a Big 12 title contender, his play has stayed in the spotlight. Hunter’s nine touchdown catches are tied for sixth-most in the country. He’s 11th in receiving yards (856) and sixth in catches (69). Then there’s the other half of his resume, where as a cornerback, he leads the Buffaloes in passes defended, has two interceptions and forced a game-ending overtime fumble in Week 4.

According to Pro Football Focus, Hunter has allowed just 125 yards receiving and no touchdowns over 519 defensive reps this season. He’s maintained top-tier numbers on both sides of the ball despite playing 1,065 of Colorado’s 1,290 snaps. That’s a one-of-one resume.

But while the award is Hunter’s to lose, the top of the board is crowded. By dint of captaining an undefeated Oregon team at the top of national polls, Gabriel has the next best odds at +350. But despite solid play and a statement game against Ohio State, Gabriel lacks the standalone stats and individual heroics that move the needle for voters. Being under center for an undefeated title run carries a case pretty far, but it isn’t enough unless the run couldn’t have happened with anyone else at quarterback.

While Gabriel is the prototypical quarterback Heisman candidate, Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty is having the type of season that gets a running back (one from the Mountain West at that) seriously considered. Backs and receivers need to break records to crack into the upper echelon of the Heisman race, and Jeanty (+400) has a shot at a big record. With 1,734 yards through nine games, the Boise State back has Barry Sanders’ single-season rushing title in his sights. It’s still a long road to 2,628, but Jeanty is averaging 192.7 yards per game, and with the Broncos’ only loss coming on a last-second Oregon field goal, it’s a safe bet that Boise State will play in the Mountain West title game and at least one playoff contest (or bowl), which would give Jeanty five more games to thrash defenses. He’d only need to average 178 yards per contest — easy work for him. Jeanty could be one game away from history by the time ballots are due. Not a bad final nudge for voters.

… Continue reading story here …

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November 12th

CU moves up to No. 17 (from No. 20) in latest College Football Playoff Rankings 

Committee rankings:

• 25 Tulane
• 24 Army
• 23 Missouri
• 22 LSU
• 21 South Carolina
• 20 Clemson
• 19 Louisville
• 18 Washington State
• 17 Colorado
• 16 Kansas State
• 15 Texas A&M
• 14 SMU
• 13 Boise State (12th seed)
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• 12 Georgia (first team out)
• 11 Mississippi
• 10 Alabama
• 9 Miami (4th seed)
• 8 Notre Dame (9th seed)
• 7 Tennessee (8th seed)
• 6 BYU (3rd seed)
• 5 Indiana (7th seed)
• 4 Penn State (6th seed)
• 3 Texas (2nd seed)
• 2. Ohio State (5th seed)
• 1. Oregon

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Jon Wilner has CU heading to the College Football Playoff

… In spite of himself. Note the snarky comment about CU … 

From the San Jose Mercury News … Three weekends remain in round-robin conference play, but only one is needed for clarity on the postseason status of several teams tied to Pac-12 bowls.

By the close of business Saturday night, we’ll know:

— If Arizona, which must sweep its final three games to become bowl-eligible, has been eliminated.

— If Cal and Washington, which need one victory to secure a berth, are safe.

— If Oregon State, UCLA, USC and Utah, which need two wins in their final three games, have any margin for error remaining.

All the uncertainty at the bottom of the pecking order has created a wide range of outcomes.

The collection of 12 current and former Pac-12 schools could produce nine or 10 bowl-eligible teams, in which case several would become free agents looking for vacancies in games tied to other leagues.

Or the group could produce just five or six eligible teams, in which case the bowls affiliated with the Pac-12 would have availability.

By the end of the week, the picture will come into focus.

To the Hotline’s latest projections …

College Football Playoff
Team: Oregon (Big Ten champion)
Comment: The Ducks have a 95 percent chance to reach the CFP (as the Big Ten champion or an at-large team), according to the ESPN playoff predictor. Considering Oregon (10-0) has Wisconsin (5-4) and Washington (5-5) remaining, that seems low.

College Football Playoff
Team: Colorado (Big 12 champion)
Comment: Win out, and the Buffaloes (7-2) would clinch a berth in the Big 12 title game and be one victory from the CFP. We are not sure the college football media machine could handle Deion Sanders in the playoff without hyperventilating. (That’s doubly true of ESPN.)

Alamo Bowl
Team: Washington State
Comment: The climb into the CFP is not as steep as the sheer face of El Capitan, but the Cougars (8-1) need a load of teams ranked ahead of them to lose — and they might need a few of them to lose twice. The Alamo would be a perfectly satisfactory fallback option, however.

Holiday Bowl
Team: Arizona State
Comment: We have reached the point in the lineup where any team with eight wins will have an excellent chance to spend the holidays in San Diego. And the Sun Devils (7-2), who haven’t participated in the Holiday Bowl since 2013, are the best bet to reach eight.

Las Vegas Bowl
Team: USC
Comment: Welcome to the realm of no good options, where bowl officials will have to force a smile and extend a warm welcome to mediocre teams. Because of its brand, USC (4-5) stands the best chance of being the first selection of what feels like a supplemental draft.

… Continue reading story here …

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November 11th

Stewart Mandel/Ari Wasserman have CU winning the Big 12, a No. 4 seed in the College Football Playoff

From Stewart Mandel at The Athletic … Alabama’s 42-13 blitzkrieg at LSU coupled with Ole Miss’ 28-10 rout of Georgia has created quite the muddled mess in the SEC. At least eight different teams could still reach the SEC Championship Game.

For the purposes of this exercise, I’m projecting the Dawgs to beat Tennessee next week and Texas to win at Texas A&M. Based on my colleague Seth Emerson’s calculations, this would likely produce a Texas-Alabama matchup in Atlanta, and I like the Tide in that one.

Meanwhile, at this rate, at least one SEC team is going to finish 10-2 and miss the Playoff. My guess is Tennessee, which would have just one Top 25 win (against Alabama) and possibly only three wins over teams that finish .500 or better. Unless of course the Vols edge out an 11-1 Indiana team with no Top 25 wins.

Elsewhere, Oregon has done absolutely nothing wrong, but I’m back to riding Ohio State if they meet in a Big Ten Championship Game rematch. Penn State has an underwhelming resume, but given the committee had them No. 6 last week, an 11-1 Nittany Lions team would likely be seeded above 11-2 Texas and 10-2 Georgia.

Finally, Colorado is my new projected Big 12 champ. The Buffs are rolling. It pains me to leave 9-0 BYU out of the field entirely, but the Cougars’ luck is going to run out at some point, possibly at Arizona State in a couple of weeks. A 10-2 Ole Miss team with lopsided wins over Georgia and a possible 9-3 South Carolina team gets my last at-large spot.

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November 10th 

Colorado, at 7-2, now being picked to play in the Alamo Bowl as the “Pac-12” No. 2 team

Bowling … While the 7-2 Buffs are 5-1 in Big 12 play, bowl selections are, for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, controlled by the old Pac-12 contracts. As a result, CU is not competing with Kansas State and Iowa State for bowl bids, but Washington State and Washington. So … here are the Pac-12 “standings” through Week Nine (only overall records count, not conference standings):

• Oregon – 10-0
• Washington State – 8-1
• Colorado – 7-2
• Arizona State – 7-2
• California – 5-4
• Washington – 5-5
• Utah – 4-5
• Oregon State – 4-5
• USC – 4-5
• UCLA – 4-5
• Arizona – 3-6
• Stanford – 2-7 – eliminated

Okay, and here are the Pac-12’s bowl affiliations, in order of selection:

• College Football Playoff
• Alamo Bowl – San Antonio – December 28th
• Las Vegas Bowl – Las Vegas – December 27th
• Holiday Bowl – San Diego – December 27th
• Sun Bowl – El Paso – December 31st
• Los Angeles Bowl – Los Angeles – December 18th
• Independence Bowl – Shreveport, Louisiana – December 28th
• Other ESPN affiliated bowls …

Now … Bowl selectors can choose a team which is within one game of the team above them. For example, the Alamo Bowl could take Colorado (6-2) over Washington State (7-1), but can’t take a team two games below. So, if Washington State finishes 10-2, and CU 8-4, the Alamo Bowl can’t take the Buffs over the Cougars. Not to complicate things further, but the “Pac-12” representative in the Alamo Bowl will face off against … a Big 12 team (the Independence Bowl is also “Pac-12” v. Big 12). So, CU could theoretically play Iowa State or BYU in the Alamo Bowl or the Independence Bowl.

Whew … so here are some recent projections for Colorado:

• ESPN … Colorado v. SMU or Clemson in the Holiday Bowl … or .. CU v. Washington State in the Alamo Bowl (not sure how that would work, as it’s supposed to be the “Pac-12” v. the Big 12 …
• CBS Sports … Colorado v. Iowa State in the Alamo Bowl
• 247 Sports … Colorado v. Clemson in the Holiday Bowl

November 6th

Playoff Bubble Watch: Colorado “In the Mix”

From The Athletic … On Saturday, while Deion Sanders and Colorado sat at home and Travis Hunter did a Heisman Trophy media tour of national pregame shows, the Buffaloes were among the biggest winners in the College Football Playoff race.

Iowa State lost at home to Texas Tech and trimmed the list of undefeated Big 12 teams to just one. Not long after, Kansas State tripped up in Houston, suffering its second Big 12 loss and falling behind the Buffaloes in the conference standings after beating Colorado last month.

Now Colorado, which won a single conference game a season ago and trailed 28-0 at halftime to Nebraska in Week 2, has a real path to the Playoff. This is the benefit of the current iteration of the Playoff: Every conference race has relevance. And the Buffaloes are right in the thick of the Big 12 race.

Two weeks ago, six teams in the league had one conference loss or fewer. After the inevitable chaos arrived in the most wide-open power conference, there are only three. And one of them is Colorado.

BYU is the Big 12’s lone remaining undefeated team, and the Buffaloes are now tied with Iowa State in second place. The Buffaloes travel to Texas Tech this weekend and finish the season with games against three teams sitting in the bottom four of the conference. Neither BYU nor Iowa State will face Colorado.

Iowa State still has Kansas State and Cincinnati, two teams in the top half of the conference. BYU still has a good chance to finish 12-0 but travels to rival Utah and Arizona State and hosts improving Kansas and Houston.

All Colorado needs to control its fate for the Playoff is one Iowa State loss. If it doesn’t get it, it might still qualify for the Big 12 Championship Game via tiebreakers. (Note: How the tiebreakers are applied likely will depend on if BYU loses and, if it does, who it loses to.)

At that point, Sanders and the Buffs would be 60 minutes away from the Playoff.

Big 12

Kansas State’s and Iowa State’s losses opened the door for an impossibly sexy proposition for the Playoff (see above), but it did major damage to the league’s hopes of landing an at-large bid. Iowa State is the league’s only team with a real shot, but it will have to run the table and hope Kansas State keeps winning to make an Iowa State win in Farmageddon look as good as possible.

Even then, it might take BYU getting to the Big 12 title game and losing to Iowa State, Colorado or K-State for the league to get more than one team.

… Continue reading story here …

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Colorado moves up to No. 18 in latest Associated Press poll

From ESPN … Oregon was the No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll for the fourth straight week Sunday as Penn State and Indiana climbed into the top five, Georgia and Miami dropped out of the top 10, and losses by four other ranked teams shuffled the rankings with a month left in the regular season.

No team this season has held the top spot for more consecutive weeks than Oregon, which pulled away from Maryland to improve to 10-0 over the weekend and is a unanimous No. 1 for the second straight week.

Georgia and Miami plummeted. The Bulldogs lost 28-10 at Ole Miss and went from No. 2 to No. 11, marking the first time they have been out of the top 10 since late in the 2020 season. The Hurricanes’ 28-23 loss at Georgia Tech sent them from No. 4 to No. 12.

How those losses affect their bids for a College Football Playoff spot will be known when the selection committee releases its second rankings Tuesday night. Georgia is the fifth-highest-ranked SEC team in the AP poll, and Miami remains the highest-ranked ACC team.

No. 18 Colorado controls its own destiny in the playoff chase. The Buffaloes are alone in second place in the Big 12, one game behind unbeaten BYU, and are the conference’s second-highest-ranked team in the AP poll. They don’t meet in the regular season. If both run the table, they would play in the conference championship game.

Associated Press poll … 

Others receiving votes: Iowa State 92, Arizona State 35, Pittsburgh 18, Louisiana 14, UNLV 10

Dropped from rankings: Iowa State 17, Pittsburgh 23, Vanderbilt 24

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Coaches poll … 

1. Oregon (55)
2. Ohio State
3. Texas
4. Tennessee
5. Penn Sate
6. Indiana
7. Notre Dame
8. BYU
9. Alabama
10. Georgia
11. Ole Miss
12. Miami
13. SMU
14. Boise State
15. Texas A&M
16. Clemson
17. Army
18. Washington State
19. Kansas State
20. Colorado
21. Missouri
22. LSU
23. South Carolina
24. Louisville
25. Iowa State

Others receiving votes: Tulane 85; Louisiana 42; Arizona State 30; Pittsburgh 28; UNLV 17; Memphis 11; Navy 3; James Madison 2; Illinois 2; Duke 1

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This post, about the Utah game, from the 2024 Season, is filed under Article.
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