College football bowl picks: Christmas weekend games

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College football bowl picks: Las Vegas Bowl trophy

Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

Here for our college football bowl picks, we’ve passed the early group of bowl games. You know, the ones mostly with schools you didn’t know played in Division I, or FBS, or College Football Playoff subdivision, or whatever we’re calling it these days.

We’re headed down the backstretch of games, the ones that get us to Christmas. You’ve heard of a lot of these schools, but you’re not really sure why they’re in a bowl game.

Who cares? It’s bowl season. Let’s keep it going.

Here’s how we see this next group of games, the warm-up act before the big guys start playing.

Related: We were 3-5-1. Ugh. Looking for a better showing this time.

The We Got in Under the Wire Game

ROOFCLAIM.COM Bocal Raton Bowl

USF (6-6) vs. Syracuse (6-6)

Both of these teams had to win their final game of the regular season to become bowl-eligible. Syracuse beat Wake Forest 35-31 and USF beat Charlotte 48-14.

Long-time Syracuse coach Dino Babers was fired before that game against Wake. One game to go! Sheesh.

Tight ends coach Nunzio Campanile took over and won. Campanile will coach this game before Fran Brown, the former defensive backs coach at Georgia, takes over as head coach

Both of these teams like to run the ball, with each ranked in the Top 30 nationally for rushing offense. Syracuse running back LeQuint Allen had 1,062 yards rushing and nine touchdowns. He ran for at least 100 yards in each of the last four games of the regular season.

Nay’Quan Wright had 757 yards rushing and seven TDs. His best game was an 186-yard effort against Connecticut.

The Orange has a slight edge defensively only because USF has the worst passing defense in the country. But Syracuse can’t throw, what a quandary. Still, we’ll go with Syracuse to cover.

The Can The Scoreboard Go To Triple Digits? game

Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl

Georgia Tech 6-6 vs. UCF 6-6

Now this is just the kind of game you want from a pair of middling, major conference teams. Neither UCF nor Georgia Tech is very fond of defense.

The Knights rank 75th nationally and the Yellow Jackets come in at 104. So, open the floodgates, we’ve got some scoring to do!

We might see some rushing records broken because neither of these teams can stop the run. Georgia Tech gave up 5.41 yards per rush to rank No. 130 and Central Florida gave up 4.84 yards per rush to rank 113th.

Expect RJ Harvey to have a field day for UCF. He ran for 1,261 yards and 16 touchdowns and averaged 6.1 yards per carry. He had 206 yards against Oklahoma State.

Still, Georgia Tech had some good wins and played Georgia within a touchdown. So we’re taking the Over here, expecting them to blow past the 67.5.

The There’s No Crying in Football! game

Camellia Bowl

Arkansas State 6-6 vs. Northern Illinois 6-6

The Sun Belt sent 237 teams to bowl games this year and so far has won just once. So can Arkansas State salvage something for this league of bowl eligibles?

Well, the Red Wolves did win one battle. They were able to keep quarterback Jaylen Raynor from the transfer portal. The freshman threw for 2,300 yards and 15 touchdowns. His best game was a 383-yard, six-touchdown effort against UMass.

Making Raynor’s stats even more impressive is that he did this in 10 games. He didn’t play in Arkansas State’s 73-0 loss to Oklahoma, a.k.a. the infamous Butch Jones crying on the sidelines game, or the 37-3 loss to Memphis.

Northern Illinois will counter with running back Antario Brown, with 10 touchdowns rushing on more than six yards per carry.

This seems like a game that Arkansas State should win. But Tennessee fans can tell you to never trust Butch Jones in a game that matters. So, we’ll cop out and go with the Over here.

The Hey, Does Anybody Want to Coach These Teams? game

76 Birmingham Bowl

Troy 11-2 vs. Duke 7-5

Troy coach Jon Sumrall has left to take over at Tulane. Duke coach Mike Elko will take over for Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M (Unfortunately for Elko, Fisher got such a ridiculously large payout from the Aggies, that he’ll have to settle for an annual base salary of $7 million per season. All of us … every person who’s not a coach … got into the wrong profession!)

But, hey, at least Elko won’t have to coach a Duke team that has lost seven starters to the transfer portal. The one that hurt the most might be quarterback Riley Leonard.

Trooper Taylor, who was an associate head coach working with running backs, will be the interim for Duke. Jordan Waters was the top running back with 753 yards and 12 TDs. But Waters was another one of the transfer portal players.

Defensive coordinator Greg Gasparato will coach Troy. The Trojans will lean on running back Kimani Vidal, the Sun Belt’s offensive player of the year who had three games with 200+ rushing yards.

Even though the Blue Devils are from the bigger conference, we’ll take Troy to cover in this game. We think the Trojans are going to win big here.

The We Have Too Many Bowls and Need Teams, Welcome Dukes! game

Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl

James Madison 11-1 vs. Air Force 8-4

There’s no shortage of silly NCAA rules. For years, players watched as coaches got millions and millions of dollars while they got nothing. They watched as coaches could sign a contract to coach a team, win a bunch of games, and leave for another job while they couldn’t transfer without endless paperwork, pleading, and then sitting out.

Another one of those crazy rules was that when a school moved up from a lower division, it would have to wait two years to become bowl-eligible. James Madison was one of those schools.

But because we have way too many college bowl games, we don’t have enough teams with at least a 6-6 record (oh, but look, there are a bunch of those teams in bowl games!). So, the NCAA “adjusted” the eligibility rule and welcomed a really good James Madison team to participate a year early.

So far, none of this is bad news for the Dukes. But this is. Just as they get in a bowl against a quality opponent (or, not a 6-6 team), they lose their coach Curt Cignetti, who will take over at Indiana and take seven assistant coaches with him. Offensive line coach Damian Wroblewski will coach this game. Holy Cross head coach Bob Chesney takes over for next season.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, Air Force is at the top of the charts in rushing yards. The triple option usually gives opponents fits. Still, JMU has one of the best rushing defenses in the nation, so that might be a wash.

Still, while James Madison would probably win this game under normal circumstances, losing almost the entirety of the coaching staff could take a toll. We’ll take Air Force and the points.

The We Have Too Many Bowls and Need Teams, so You’ll Do game

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Georgia State 6-6 vs. Utah State 6-6

Usually, a bowl game is a reward for a good season. Or an OK season, as we’ve pointed out earlier (6-6!!). But for Georgia State to be playing in a bowl game seems like desperation on the part of the Potato folks.

To say the Panthers limped into this game would be an insult to folks on crutches. Georgia State lost its last five games in a row, by an average score of 41.8-18.6! Congratulations, fellas, we’re going to a bowl game!

Utah State was a little better. The Aggies did go 3-2 in their last five games, but two of those wins were in double overtime.

Georgia State also has 12 players in the transfer portal.

It seems too easy, but we’re taking Utah State to cover.

The Numbers Tell the Story game

68 Ventures Bowl

South Alabama 6-6 vs. Eastern Michigan 6-6

Why are there 68 Ventures? We couldn’t get by on 50? Twenty-five even. These are the things we ponder as we concede that bowl game names are getting crazier and nobody knows what they mean. But we digress.

The real number of this game is 190. Or it’s a magic number, really, for South Alabama. The Jaguars are 6-0 this season when they rush for 190 or more yards. Since they’re 6-6, you can guess what happens when they don’t run for that many yards.

But those sneaky bookmakers, they know all these stats. So combine that number with Eastern Michigan ranking 109 in rushing defense and you get a three-score spread. Well, that, and the fact that Eastern Michigan’s six wins came against teams with records of 3-9, 4-8, 1-11, 2-10 and 3-9.

Maybe 68 will come into play after all. We’ll take South Alabama and a huge number to cover.

The We Were Not Supposed to Be In This Bowl game

SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl

Utah 8-4 vs. Northwestern 7-5

Washington and Oregon were the darlings of the season. The two Pac-12 teams that were taking the conference to new heights, just as they and eight other schools were tearing it apart. But, no disrespect to the Huskies and Ducks, but that last Pac-12 winner, the one that was supposed to give the league sendoff to the conferences up in the sky was Utah.

The Utes had won the conference two years in a row. They had gone 10-4 and 10-4 and played in back-to-back Rose Bowls. This was supposed to be the crowning achievement of that recent run.

But quarterback Cam Rising, who suffered more injuries than Evel Knievel after a failed jump (Rising tore his ACL, meniscus, MPFL and MCL) in the Rose Bowl Game last year, was never able to return for the season. That doomed a Utah team that ranked in the Top 20 defensively.

Northwestern, after a horrible start to the season, won five of its last seven games. Like Utah, it was because of defense. David Braun, who came in as defensive coordinator, took over when the school fired Pat Fitzgerald and the team responded.

The Wildcats were likely headed to no bowl at all until they closed out with wins against Wisconsin, Purdue and Illinois.

We like Northwestern in this game, but not enough to pick them. Instead, we’re looking for a slog game and going with the Under.

The Boy, Are Our Arms Tired game

Easy Post Hawai’i Bowl

Coastal Carolina 7-5 vs. San Jose State 7-5

Part of the fun of going to bowl games is the fact that you get to travel to fun places. Boosters get to pack up the RV and hit the road.

So what about those Coastal Carolina fans who get to travel 4,792 miles to watch their team play? Now that’s a road trip!

Well, those fans might make it, but the Chanticleers have 11 players who have entered the transfer portal.

Coastal Carolina won six games against bowl teams (read this about how important it is to say your team is a “bowl team”) and won three games using a backup quarterback.

San Jose State quarterback Chevan Cordeiro is making a homecoming of sorts. Cordeiro transferred to the Spartans after playing four seasons at Hawai’i. He threw for 2,558 yards and 19 touchdowns.

While Cordeiro might be able to get San Jose State some points to play with, he can’t help the defense. The Spartans have the worst red-zone defense in the country.

So with that, we’ll take the Chanticleers and the points.

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