Paul Prattles On

Welcome Back! So far this bowl season I am 13-10, a 56.5% winning percentage, a slight backslide from where I was last week (7-5). Hopefully, I can finish strong and at least get up over 60%, as it looks like I won't quite make it to 70%. Bowl games are notoriously hard to predict, as it's hard to know the effect of coaches leaving and interims taking over for just the one game, players opting out, and which teams will be motivated to win, and which are there just to have a good time. But none of that is going to stop me from giving it my best shot! As I've said all year, I don't have inside information, and you're not going to get a ton of deep analysis here- you can find all of that elsewhere. What you will get is a little historical research, some interesting facts, and my opinion. And I'm just picking the winner, not against the point spread.  Now... on with the picks! Thursday, December 30 Duke's Mayo Bowl- North Carolina vs South Carolina - The Tar Hee...

Welcome Back! We are now a little more than halfway through the bowls, and some definite trends are emerging, now that every conference has participated in at least one bowl, even with the multiple cancellations. Which Conference is Best? With the regular season completed, this is how the conferences are doing in the bowls so far. AAC 3-0 1.000 Big Ten 1-0 1.000 MWC 5-1 .833 SBC 3-1 .750 Ind 2-1 .667 Big 12 1-1 .500 CUSA 3-5 .375 MAC 2-5 .286 Pac 12 0-1 .000 ACC 0-1 .000 SEC 0-4 .000 The biggest surprise, of course, is the SEC going 0-4 so far, as they usually have one of the best bowl records each year. With 8 teams left to play, the best they could possibly finish is 9-5, and that's assuming both Alabama and Georgia win their semifinal and then meet in the final.  The AAC at 3-0 and the MWC at 5-1 is quite impressive, especially since 4 of the combined 8 wins are against P5 schools. In fact, at this point, the P5 is only 2-7, with both wins coming against other P5 teams, which me...

Welcome Back! So far this bowl season I am 7-5, a 58.3% winning percentage, which is just kinda mediocre, I guess. Bowl games are notoriously hard to predict, as it's hard to know the effect of coaches leaving and interims taking over for just the one game, players opting out, and which teams will be motivated to win, and which are there just to have a good time. But none of that is going to stop me from giving it my best shot! As I've said all year, I don't have inside information, and you're not going to get a ton of deep analysis here- you can find all of that elsewhere. What you will get is a little historical research, some interesting facts, and my opinion. And I'm just picking the winner, not against the point spread.  Now... on with the picks! Thursday, December 23 Frisco Football Classic- North Texas vs Miami, Oh - The Mean Green won their last 5 games to finish 6-6 and in 3rd place in the CUSA West, and were the only team all year to defeat UTSA in the reg...

Welcome Back! Some new features this week- see below for some cool info! Which Conference is Best? With the regular season completed, this is how the conferences are doing in the bowls so far. MWC 4-0 1.000 AAC 1-0 1.000 SBC 2-1 .667 Ind 1-1 .500 CUSA 3-4 .429 Pac 12 0-1 .000 MAC 0-4 .000 SEC 0-0 Big Ten 0-0 Big 12 0-0 ACC 0-0 Conference Bowl History I went through each team's bowl record and combined it with the teams from their respective conference to see which conference (and division) has historically done best in bowl games. Now, this is an imperfect analysis, because teams have switched conferences over the years, but I'm not taking the time to align every team with every conference they were with in every year. Instead, I used the conference that each team is currently in. If you are interested in doing the other research, be my guest. I would love for you to share the results with me! One other point I would like to make is that for years, the Big Ten and Pac 12 (and e...

Welcome Back! So far this year I am 631-218 overall, a 74.3% winning percentage, which isn't too bad, I guess; below the 75% I was shooting for, but better than the 71.8% I finished last year. Bowl games are notoriously hard to predict, as it's hard to know the effect of coaches leaving and interims taking over for just the one game, players opting out, and which teams will be motivated to win, and which are there just to have a good time. But none of that is going to stop me from giving it my best shot! As I've said all year, I don't have inside information, and you're not going to get a ton of deep analysis here- you can find all of that elsewhere. What you will get is a little historical research, some interesting facts, and my opinion. And I'm just picking the winner, not against the point spread.  Now... on with the picks! Friday, December 17 Bahamas Bowl- Middle Tennessee vs Toledo - The Blue Raiders won 4 of their last 6 to become bowl eligible, but only ...

Welcome Back! This will be somewhat abbreviated this week. Next week, I will replace the Conference and Division features with how each conference is doing in the bowl games so far.  See the bottom for how my preseason conference predictions panned out compared to the major magazines. Which Conference is Best? With the regular season completed, all of the non-conference games have been played. 1. SEC 48-8 .857 2. Big Ten 32-9 .781 3. Big 12 23-7 .767 4. ACC 33-20 .622 5. MWC 30-19 .612 6. AAC 25-19 .568 7. Sun Belt 21-19 .525 8. Independents 34-37 .479 9. Pac 12 16-19 .457 10. MAC 21-26 .449 11. CUSA 24-32 .429 12. FCS 12-104 .103 Now the above includes the record against all competition.  What if we narrow it down to just FBS competition?  Does that change the standings?  Let's see... 1. SEC 35-7 .833 2. Big Ten 25-9 .735 3. Big 12 14-7 .667 4. MWC 21-17 .553 5. ACC 20-19 .512 6. AAC 17-18 .486 7. Independents 29-34 .460 8. Sun Belt 13-18 .419 9. Pac 12 9-17 .346 10...

Welcome Back! This will be my final Power Rankings until after the bowls are complete (Jan 4). With only one game this past weekend, I thought it would be interesting to see how my final rankings compare to my preseason rankings. How accurate was I in predicting how the season would turn out? (On Wednesday, I'll do the same with my conference predictions).  As it turns out, quite a few teams ended up in the same general area (top 25, bottom 25, etc.), but a lot of teams moved a tremendous amount. If you've been following this blog all season, it seemed like some teams never seemed to move very far, but Michigan moved all the way from 27 to 3, Baylor from 62 to 5, Ole Miss from 45 to 8, and Arkansas from 94 to 10. There are many more examples, as you can see below. And there are just as many who moved the other way- Clemson from 2 to 28, LSU from 8 to 67, and Florida from 13 to 76, for example. Have fun perusing the rankings, and feel free to leave a comment! Here are the new ra...