College Football Bowl Projections: Brett McMurphy’s Bowl Predictions Before Conference Championships

Now that the 82 teams that will go bowling are known, let’s figure out the pairings for each of the 41 bowls.

Before we dive into my newest bowl projections, my loyal readers will remember last week’s projections. The part where I wrote Minnesota would be the only 5-7 team needed to fill the 82nd spot and — guess what — Minnesota is the only 5-7 team headed to a bowl.

Remarkable, huh?

The toughest aspect of the projections is correctly forecasting the four playoff teams and New Year’s Six bowl matchups.

These projections are based on my playoff picks of Georgia, Michigan and Florida State all finishing 13-0 and 12-1 Pac-12 champion Oregon getting the final spot.

These also are based on FSU making the playoff, which guarantees an ACC team (Louisville) to the Orange Bowl, and Missouri and Penn State earning the final at-large New Year’s Six bids, sending Ole Miss to the Citrus Bowl.

The breakdown of the 82 bowl teams by conference is as follows: Sun Belt (12), ACC (11), Big Ten (9), Big 12 (9), SEC (9), Pac-12 (8), Mountain West (7), AAC (6), MAC (6), Conference USA (4) and Notre Dame.

I will update my projections on Wednesday following Tuesday’s penultimate College Football Playoff selection committee rankings. All the official pairings will be announced on Sunday and/or hopefully on my Twitter (X) feed.

Here are the projections along with the projected point spread of each matchup from Action Network senior writer Collin Wilson’s betting power ratings.

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