Bowl Predictions 2014: Week 5

They're hot and fresh, that's right, it's another edition of bowl predictions.

Unfortunately, there wasn't as much news as I'd hoped, mostly because a lot of bowls are apparently going to wait until December 7 to reveal their picks. Hopefully there will be some more news next week. Until then, let's continue to speculate!

Playoffs

I have another helpful graphic:

It's in alphabetical order this time, so it doesn't reflect the current rankings or the order in which I do the conferences or anything. Based on this, I'd still generally agree that Alabama, Oregon, and Florida State are going to be the top three (but boy howdy are FSU making it hard on themselves).

The question, really, is that #4 slot. And I think there are four candidates:

• Mississippi State: the current leaders in the clubhouse, but I'm writing this before this week's rankings. They can't be real excited about Auburn, Ole Miss, and LSU's play of late.
• TCU: currently ahead of Baylor, but that could change if Baylor beats Kansas State this weekend.
• Baylor: needs to beat Kansas State, but I think that point their win over TCU just has to count for something, right? We'll find out in due time, I guess.
• Ohio State: sort of playing their way in, especially with Minnesota playing well. Problem for them is that they still sport by far the worst loss on this list, so they still need a lot of help.

I still like Baylor the best, but if they beat Kansas State like I project and then are still out next week, I will have to revise my predictions.

After that, I started trying to logically do the access bowl spots. It's still a guess (other than TCU, Ohio State, and Mississippi State), but I did at least use this week's rankings to get an idea. The question of how to treat championship game losers is still around, though, but that's why I have things like Clemson in the Orange Bowl over Georgia Tech. (GT can do themselves a large favor by beating UGA, though.)

Other Things of Note

Let's do this bullet-point style.

• Sorry, Marshall, but it's just not going to happen. 
• That said, I'm going with Colorado State because they are a) currently higher ranked and b) have better wins than Boise. Problem for the Rams is still that pesky loss to Boise that will keep them out of the Mountain West title game. We'll see what happens if and when the committee decides to rank either of them.
• Texas Bowl: Texas-Texas A&M. It has to happen. Has to!
• Speaking of former Big 12 rivalries, how about Missouri-Nebraska in the Citrus Bowl?
• It's difficult to tell how teams that are going to fire their coaches will fare in the new bowl scenarios. I bumped Florida down because of this.
• I feel like I really need a year with this thing to figure out how it will shake out. Hopefully next year will have a little less uncertainty.