2019 College Football Bowl Projections After Week 3: Fringe Teams Fall

There weren't any landscape-altering upsets in college football on Saturday, but plenty of teams that figured to be on the fringe of bowl eligibility saw their chances take a hit.

Maryland's loss to Temple and Kentucky's blown fourth-quarter lead to Florida were just two of the games that could keep teams out of the postseason when all is said and done.

Below we project every college football bowl game, and the point spreads for those possible matchups.

2019 College Football Bowl Projections, New Year's Six

I've had Boise State as the top Group of Five team for the first few weeks, but after dismantling Stanford, it's clear UCF is right there. And since the Knights have a head start in the polls, they get the spot.

The Orange Bowl is the trickiest to project — assuming Clemson goes to the playoff, which other ACC team deserves a New Year's Six spot? Virginia it is, for now.

Notre Dame gets into the meat of its schedule soon, with four ranked opponents coming up in its next five games.

Full 2019 College Football Bowl Projections

We're still using a lot of what we think we know to make these projections, since so few games have been played. Most teams still have many of their coin-flip games to come after cleaning up against weaker opponents in the first few contests.

A few notes:

• The MAC has looked horrific, going 12-19-2 against the spread. Some teams will get bowl eligible, of course, but the league may have a down year in postseason qualification. I had to include Central Michigan, against my better judgment, because someone had to get bowl eligible from this conference.
•  The Pac-12 South is once again a mess — Arizona lost to Hawaii then beat Texas Tech, Arizona State shocked Michigan State, USC fell to 2-1 and has a brutal schedule the rest of the way. Right now I've got Arizona missing out, but that could change drastically by season's end.
• The ACC is in a similar spot, with so many coin-flip games still to be played. Wake Forest gets the nod at 3-0 over Syracuse, and North Carolina is still in there for now. I also can't believe I have Boston College and Virginia Tech still in the postseason, despite my better judgment.
• The lower-middle class of the Big Ten is always tricky to project, because teams like Maryland and Indiana could start 3-0 and get walloped by the big boys of the East and fail to get to six wins when it once looked like a sure thing.