Excepting the CFP championship game, bowl season has come to an end. The good news is we get to see one more SEC team lose. The bad news is the SEC is guaranteed bragging rights for another 12 months as national champions.
So who were the winners and losers this year? I've tabulated the conference bowl records below, but I wanted to hand out some superlatives first.
Participation Trophy
Southwestern Athletic Conference. Welp, you got to go to a bowl. So there's that.
Making the Most of It
Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. To be honest, I didn't even know the MEAC was a thing. So, congrats on the invite AND the win, NCA&T.
P5 Punching Bag
Pac-12/14/16/whatever they are these days. And to think, we thought that leaving the PAC12 out of the playoff would end up being a real black eye to the selection process. Thank you, Utah, for saving them from complete embarrassment.
Consolation Prize
B1G. For a conference that was denied even a shot at the championship, you've gotta think they're pretty happy with the results, overall. Thanks a lot, Harbaugh...
Bench Warmers Award
ACC. On paper, we weren't the worst P5 conference (thanks PAC12!!), but when you look at who got the wins, it's not a pretty picture. Of the four Coastal teams to get bowl invites, only Duke pulled out a win. Our conference champion (who embarrassed the Coastal winner in the ACCCG) got taken behind the woodshed by Bama in the CFP semis. Wake and NC State took care of business, but they made so little noise this year that I was surprised to even find out they were bowl eligible.
| Conference | Bowl Invites | 2017 Bowl Record | Winners | Losers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAC | 7 | 4-3 | Temple, South Florida, Navy, UCF | SMU, Houston, Memphis |
| ACC | 10 | 4-6 | Duke, Florida State, Wake Forest, N.C. State | Boston College, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Miami (Fla.), Clemson |
| B1G | 8 | 7-1 | Iowa, Purdue, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin | Michigan |
| Big12 | 8 | 5-3 | Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas, Oklahoma State, TCU | Texas Tech, West Virginia, Oklahoma |
| CUSA | 8 | 4-4 | Florida Atlantic, Louisiana Tech, Marshall, Middle Tennessee | North Texas, Western Kentucky, UAB, Southern Miss |
| MEAC | 1 | 1-0 | North Carolina A&T | None |
| MAC | 5 | 1-4 | Ohio | Akron, Central Michigan, Toledo, Northern Illinois |
| MWC | 6 | 3-3 | Boise State, Wyoming, Fresno State | Colorado State, San Diego State, Utah State |
| Pac12 | 8 | 1-7 | Utah | Oregon, UCLA, Arizona, Stanford, Washington State, Arizona State, USC, Washington |
| SEC | 7 | 5-6* | Mississippi State, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama | Missouri, Texas A&M, Kentucky, LSU, Auburn |
| Sun Belt | 5 | 4-1 | Georgia State, Troy, Appalachian State, New Mexico State | Arkansas State |
| SWAC | 1 | 0-1 | None | Grambling State |
| Independent | 2 | 2-0 | Army, Notre Dame | None |
*The SEC stands at 4-5 heading into the CFPCG, but short of an asteroid hitting the stadium, they are guaranteed to go 1-1 in that game.
Comments
I think Louisville's loss was especially embarrassing when you realize Mississippi State's QB, Nick Fitzgerald, was injured in the Egg Bowl and Dan Mullen had left for Florida. The rest of the ACC, outside of Clemson, at least had respectable showings.
Hmmm, not sure if you forgot about UVA's 49-7 loss to Navy, or if you think they're just so bad that you consider that a respectable showing...both would make sense.
This should count as
23 ACC losses.LMAO LOLUVA!
Or Miami getting manhandled by Wisconsin and America's dad Paul Chryst murdering the turnover chain on national television. Maybe it is more respectable when you actually see Taylor and Wisconsin, but a lot of people didn't seem to respect Wisconsin.
I did. They have looked solid every time I saw them on TV. Always happy to see Miami lose.
They were the #6 team in the country and favored by 4.5 in what was a home game for Miami. So I don't know about the narrative that they weren't respected. They didn't get any consideration with regards to the playoff but they were behind Ohio State in the pecking order for obvious reasons and Ohio State didn't make it so I don't see a gripe there. There wasn't any clamor about Miami being snubbed for a playoff spot either.
Wisconsin wasn't respected for like 98% of the season, I was one of the haters.
I'm prone to forgetting that UVA has a football team. That was truly the greatest embarrassment of the bowl season.
As far as Miami, who was mentioned below, I honestly don't think they embarrassed themselves. I didn't expect them to win and it was a 3 point game in the 4th quarter. It actually played out fairly similarly to our bowl game.
Yeah all the projections having us play Miss St. excited me because without Fitzgerald we would have crushed them. Just like Hokies bball though (wiht Wisconsin), we drew about the toughest draw possible in terms of opponent.
They weren't just missing Mullen, he took the whole staff with him, they didn't have coordinators either haha.
The Celebration Bowl featuring the SWAC and MEAC isn't technically a bowl. It's the game where the champions of those two FCS conferences play against each other, in lieu of being part of the FCS playoffs.
Well that explains it. Ironic that the NCAA site (from which I pulled records) included it:
http://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2017-12-28/college-football-ho...
It's so unlike the NCAA to be completely inconsistent in their application of their own guidelines...
Yeah when you look closer at the ACC's 4-6 record it probably looks better than it actually is with 2 of the 4 wins being over G5 teams, and good ole Virginia took a 42 point L from a 6-6 G5 team (though I thoroughly enjoyed this one, as I'm sure we all did).
Interesting note on the SEC, I'm pretty sure Bama making the playoff bumped all their teams up to a better bowl game so they played in quite a few unfavorable matchups, and their only G5 opponent I believe was UCF.
On the PAC, I think the West Coast has just been trending away from caring about sports as much for a long time, outside of a few team's loyal fanbases, and it's finally really catching up to the conference. I watch a lot of PAC12AFTERDARK games just because they are on late and I love watching football, and those games just have a different feel to them, as if they just don't really matter. It's understandable, but unfortunate because there are some quality programs out west. I'm quite interested to see if this trend reverses or changes over time.
It actually didn't. If Alabama hadn't made the CFP, they would have been in the Orange Bowl instead of Wisconsin. Auburn was still in range for the NY6. They might not have been in the Peach Bowl, as the potential matchups would have been different. But all of the SEC bowl tie-ins outside of the NY6 would have remained the same.
Short version -- Georgia, Alabama, and Auburn were all going to NY6 bowls, regardless of which bowl they actually placed in.
The ACC was more affected by Alabama making the CFP, since it gave the Orange Bowl to the Big 10, which gave us the Citrus Bowl, and pulled everyone up a spot.
Interesting, just didn't feel that way with ACC getting a bunch of G5 schools and the SEC only getting one G5 school, undefeated UCF, and getting matchups like 7-5 Kentucky against ranked 9-3 Northwestern.
EDITED because I didn't look deep enough into the bottom tier bowls.
The ACC should have only played 1 G5 school - Navy. The Military Bowl is the only bowl tie-in we have against G5 without getting into conditional matchups.
Part of that is due to how the conferences did in relation to themselves. (For instance, an 8-win season would be good enough for fifth place in the SEC, but only sixth place in the Big Ten.) Part of that is also due to how the Big Ten and SEC assign teams to bowl games, and it's not a strict pecking order.
Pretty sure Southern Miss and Nothern Ill are both G5... both played ACC teams this year in bowl games.
Florida State played Southern Miss and Duke played Northern Illinois.
I don't pretend to know the pecking order for bowl selection, especially after everything changed with the playoff. I'm just saying regardless of how we got there, the ACC had favorable bowl matchups outside of Clemson and maybe us, and still underperformed.
Still wrong after the edit, ACC played 3 G5 teams...
Caught me in mid-edit as I realized I didn't look close enough at our bottom tier bowls.
But here's the thing -- ACC had 10 bowl eligible teams, plus we had Notre Dame taking one of our bowl slots. SEC only had 9, and Big Ten had 8. Both of those conferences sent 3 teams to the NY6, while we only sent 2. So, our Tier 2 bowls that were supposed to be against the SEC or Big Ten couldn't fill those slots.
I don't why I found this hilarious. Leg for you
dammit, I misspelled guaranteed
I'm told that Auburn "Didn't want to be there" and if they had wanted to be there, they would have crushed UCF easily, so I hope you consider that in your SEC analysis. LOL
I don't really think this was the case for Auburn, but I absolutely believe there is an aspect (and precedent) of letdown for teams that were close to playing for National Championships/Playoff in the past who have greatly underperformed in their still big, but consolation bowl game. Our 2007 team is a great example of this. We followed up our #3 BCS ranking by coming out as flat as I've ever seen a VT team in that first half against Kansas, we totally looked like we didn't care to be there. That 2007 team showed an incredible amount of heart and determination throughout that season, and suddenly that fire was missing in the bowl game.
I heard Alabama fans say the same thing about when they got dragged by Utah after losing to Florida in the SECCG some years back.
It's a built-in excuse.
Idk if you were ranking them in ascending order of deemed bowl success, but I'd say consolation prize is a bit mild for the B1G. They are the second biggest winners this season after the SEC's guaranteed national title.