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9 College Football Midmajors To Watch In 2014

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When we heard the phrase “Group of Five” in conjunction with college football, that natural tendency is to think of the five power conferences. But there’s another Group of Five at the reverse end of the college football spectrum. Conference USA, the American, the MAC, Mountain West and Sun Belt all represent the college football midmajors. We’re going to target the nine teams from these leagues mostly likely to have national impact.

Thanks to the new postseason system, the best team in these conferences is guaranteed a bid to a major bowl game. Presuming that the best midmajor doesn’t end up in the four-team College Football Playoff itself (a safe assumption), that team will be slotted in either the Cotton, Fiesta or Peach Bowls, who join the Orange Bowl as “the contract bowls” not hosting national semifinals.
This race to the best among five leagues looks to be wide-open. Boise State, the most prominent of the recent midmajor powers is going through a coaching change. Northern Illinois, who reached the Orange Bowl in 2012 is rebuilding. Other strong midmajors of recent years, from TCU to Louisville, have found new homes in the Power Five leagues.
Who’s going to step up Here’s our Notebook Nine, the nine midmajors most likely to get a shot at a major opponent come bowl time. These are not in order of preference (we’ll get to that at the end), but organized by conference.

American…
Central Florida: We start with UCF simply because they’re the team who would have had this slot last year—and in fact, did get a Fiesta Bowl bid since the American Conference was still an automatic qualifier. Then the Knights beat Baylor. Now they have to replace quarterback Blake Bortles, the third overall pick in the NFL draft. The defensive back seven is strong, and the receiving corps is good. UCF just needs to find some playmakers.
Houston: The Cougars won eight games a year ago and played some solid defense in the process. With eight starters back, that defense is going to be even better this season and sophomore quarterback John O’Korn has a year’s experience under his belt as the starter. Houston lost close games to Central Florida, Louisville and Cincinnati last year. It won’t take much improvement for the Coogs to have a big year.
Cincinnati: Tommy Tuberville knows what it’s like to win big, having produced an undefeated team at Auburn back in 2004. This is another team with a defense that was good last year and will be better this season. The Bearcats do have serious work to do at finding a quarterback though, if they’re going to go beyond the 8-9 win level and into the 11-1 range it’s going to take win the coveted major bowl slot.
Conference USA…
College Football BowlsMarshall: Senior quarterback Rakeem Cato has spent his college career as one of the most exciting players in the country, and the entertainment value alone would make the Thundering Herd as marquee a name as we’re going to get out of the midmajors. Marshall went 9-4 last year, beat Maryland in a bowl game and return 13 starters. But the defense needs to get significantly better.
UT-San Antonio: I hesitated about putting the Roadrunners on this list—after all, it’s only their third year at the FBS level. But Larry Coker, the coach of the great 2001 national championship team at Miami, has done an extraordinary job here. UTSA is 19-15 over those three years, won seven games last year and has 16 starters back. Could this be the year of San Antonio, from the Spurs to the Roadrunners?
MAC…
Bowling Green: Their 47-27 upset of Northern Illinois cost the Huskies a major bowl slot and vaulted the Falcons into the role of MAC favorite for the coming year. Matt Johnson is back in the saddle at quarterback, and a defense that was the best in the league last year has six starters returning. The issue? The MAC has been notoriously poor in bowl play, and in any kind of national conversation like this, it has to matter at least a little bit.
Mountain West…
Colorado State: Jim McElwain came off of Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama after the 2011 national championship year, took just two years to return the Rams to a bowl game and then beat Washington State in last year’s postseason. Now CSU is loaded in the defensive back seven and has an excellent senior quarterback in Garrett Grayson. Look for the Rams to displace Boise State in their division of the Mountain West.
Fresno State: The Bulldogs joined Northern Illinois in the hunt for an undefeated season and major bowl bid last year, right to the last game of the year before losing. Derek Carr is gone at quarterback, but perhaps eight returning starters on defense can help that side of the ball carry a little more of the load this time around.
Sun Belt…
UL-Lafayette: I flat-out love this team. Mark Hudspeth has turned the Ragin’ Cajuns into a winner—he’s gone 27-12 over his three years here and won bowl games. Terrance Broadway is a dynamic all-around quarterback. The defensive front, secondary and offensive lines are all in good shape. A September 20 road trip to Boise probably tells whether ULL can compete for the major bowl spot, or just “settle” for being Sun Belt champs.

PREDICTION

I’m going to pick Houston as the team who ends up getting a shot to play in a major bowl game, the first such opportunity for the Cougars since 1984, when they played Doug Flutie’s Boston College team in the Cotton Bowl. I see both Houston and Cincinnati separating themselves from UCF in the American, and the Cougars-Bearcats game then settling both the conference and the major bowl spot.
I’ve got UL-Lafayette coming up a bit short, with the lack of national cache hurting them. Granted, none of these teams really have “cache”, but ULL has even less than most. Which is, of course, not their fault, but we’ve all learned that any role that justice plays in college football bowl selection is purely incidental and never by design.
Colorado State is a team I can easily see making it all the way to New Year’s (all of the contract bowl games will be played on December 31 or January 1). The other teams I see more as contenders on the conference stage, rather than the 11-1 type of team it will take to reach a big bowl date.

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Final College Football Preview Extravaganza

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We’ve been previewing each conference in college football throughout the month of August here at TheSportsNotebook and with the season set to begin tomorrow, it’s time to tie it all together into one final college football preview preseason extravaganza. Let’s start with a recap of who TheSportsNotebook picked to win the five major conferences…

ACC: Florida State
Big Ten: Michigan State
SEC: South Carolina
Big 12: Oklahoma
Pac-12: USC

Now let’s move to the middle class. The Big East champ gets an automatic bid to a BCS bowl game, while the Mountain West does not, but I have a hard time seeing these conferences as being all that different in terms of quality play (well, the Mountain West might be better, but that’s another debate entirely).

Big East: Syracuse
Mountain West: Wyoming

And finally the populist rebels of the Football Bowl Subdivison in Conference USA, the WAC, MAC & Sun Belt.

C-USA: Marshall
WAC: Louisiana Tech
MAC: Kent State
Sun Belt: Western Kentucky

I’m going to forgo the usual methods of ranking a Top 10 or Top 25. That really doesn’t answer the question of who will play in college football’s biggest games at the end of the season. There are ten spots available in the top-tier games (BCS National Championship, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl). Six of the spots are reserved for the winners of the five power conferences plus the Big East. The four at-large bids have to be further spread out, because no conference can claim more than one extra spot. So when you see a Top 10 and there’s four SEC teams in it that doesn’t tell you much about who’s going to play in the major bowls.

My own selections for the four at-large spots are Alabama, Michigan, Clemson, Oklahoma State. That sets up a projected major bow lineup that looks like this…

BCS National Championship: USC vs. Oklahoma
I know, there’s no SEC team here. But with LSU and Alabama both doing some rebuilding, I think we’re looking at a two-loss champ in the nation’s top conference. USC and Oklahoma, on the other hand, look vastly superior to everyone else in their league. And unlike SEC teams, who have to play a neutral-site conference championship game, the Pac-12 plays its title game at a homefield site, which presumably the Trojans would hold if they have the kind of year everybody expects. Oklahoma doesn’t have to deal with the extra hurdle. And in the end if it’s an election year with a championship game scheduled in Miami, book the Sooners for being there, just as we saw in 2000, 2004 & 2008.

Rose Bowl: Michigan State-Alabama
With USC going to the national title game as the projected #1 team, the Rose Bowl gets the first choice of remaining teams as a replacement pick. Alabama won a national title in Pasadena in 2009 and I’m sure the Rose Bowl would be happy to have them back.

Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma State-Michigan
The Fiesta Bowl first picks to replace the loss of Oklahoma, as the Big 12 is tied to the Fiesta Bowl. This game then has the first choice in the natural selection order once replacement picks are made. So they make back-to-back selections to both maintain their relationship with the Big 12 and then bring in a marquee name. Both Okie State and Michigan would be looking for their second straight major bowl victory.

Sugar Bowl: South Carolina-Syracuse
The Sugar’s in a tough spot here. Clemson is clearly the more attractive of the teams remaining, but South Carolina-Clemson would have just played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so unless there’s some kind of bizarre finish that could justify a rematch, the Sugar will take the New York market and a Big East champ better suited to a midlevel bowl.

Orange Bowl: Florida State-Clemson
Yes, I know they’re from the same conference—the same division even. But the bowls, to the best of my knowledge, don’t coordinate with each other to avoid a circumstance like this where the Orange has no other choice left. Of course it actually plays out this way, the Orange can hope that the Pac-12 runner-up gets BCS-eligible by finishing in the top 16 (not something I am currently predicting) or that a qualified midmajor emerges (not something I am currently predicting). Or that the Fiesta Bowl takes one for the team, as it were and chooses Clemson further up, enabling the Sugar and Orange to avoid rematches (definitely not something I am currently predicting). Any which way, the potential mess around this final bowl reminds us why we’re glad a selection committee is taking over this process next season.

And the national champion? I’m concerned about their depth, but at the end of the day USC has the best combination of talent and schedule and if they get to Miami, as I’m predicting, they’ll win it all.

College Football Odds: Handicapping The Top 11

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The college football season starts Thursday night. TheSportsNotebook has completed all previews of the major conferences, as well as the mid-majors. We’ll have a final preseason extravaganza on Wednesday, with national championship picks and projections of major bowl matchups. Today we’re going to warm up by reviewing the top 11 teams. I’ve chosen the number eleven for three reasons—I have to make a superficial effort to be different from everyone else, the number has obvious relevance to football, and most importantly it’s my tribute to Oceans 11, both the original Sinatra movie and the Clooney/Pitt/Damon/Garcia remake, a name I also use for my Fantasy Football league teams. With that out of the way, TheSportsNotebook runs through the top 11 teams in the country…

Before we go into the teams, note that these are not necessarily my top eleven. This is 1 thru 11 in the current AP poll. And we’ll assess them against the betting odds Las Vegas has posted regarding their chances to win the BCS National Championship, along with their Over/Under number on total wins. Please also note that the win totals must be achieved in the 12-game regular season, with conference championship games and bowl games not counting to the total…

The Big Three: USC (5-2, 10.5), Alabama (5-1, 10.5), LSU (6-1, 10)
In my SEC preview I talked about how Alabama and LSU had to rebuild their defenses and that left the door open in the SEC for a dark horse. Having said that, the national title odds aren’t all that bad. The SEC champ will get benefit of the doubt in a close vote and whichever of these teams gets to Atlanta and the SEC title game obviously found a way to put new pieces in place and those pieces would have had 12 games to jel. And if an SEC team gets to Miami for the BCS National Championship Game, is anyone ready to bet against them? I’m not saying I’d pick at, but at 5-1 or 6-1, that’s a reasonable shot. As to USC, while that’s who I’m leaning toward as my own national title pick, 5-2 are just too tight for odds. Betting on an 11-1 season and taking the Over on win totals makes more sense.

The Top Challengers: Oklahoma (10-1, 10.5), Oregon (8-1, 10.5), Georgia (15-1, 9.5)
If I were lounging in the sports book at the Bellagio right now and saw these odds posted, I’d be at the window to get a ticket on Oklahoma at 10-1. They are clearly the best team in the Big 12, have a home game with Notre Dame that’s both easily winnable and worth some value with the voters and don’t have a conference title game to deal with. If it’s an election year with a title game in Miami, mark the Sooners down for being there, whether it’s 2000, 2004, 2008 and now 2012. Then it’s just about whether they can finally win it. But 10-1 is a great number for all that. I’m less high on Oregon, and while I like Georgia I don’t see them as decisively better than the rest of the SEC East, making either number a tough play.

The Dark Horses: Florida State (10-1, 10), Michigan (45-1, 8.5), South Carolina (30-1, 8.5)
This is what I was talking about with Florida State when I picked them to win the ACC, but said they were still overrated. To give them the same odds as Oklahoma is ridiculous. And you can’t even consider the Over, because there is no way they go 11-1 and if that doesn’t happen you can only hope for a push. It heartens to see some realistic numbers on Michigan, who is getting too much media hype. Apparently Las Vegas money sees the Wolverines a little more clearly and that 8.5 number on wins is a very reasonable Over bet. As far as a national title shot, South Carolina is the one I like the best. The Gamecocks are my pick to win the SEC East and to eventually win Spurrier’s first SEC championship. If you think a team will get to the SEC title game, possibly win it and they’re 30-1, the conference’s track record tells you it’s worth a flyer.

The Longshots: Arkansas (30-1, 8.5), West Virginia (50-1, 8.5)
Taking either of these teams to win a national title is tantamount to pulling money out of your wallet, lighting a match and starting a blaze. I don’t even like Arkansas on the win prop number, given the uncertainty in the program after Bobby Petrino’s departure and John L. Smith’s arrival. Taking West Virginia for a nine-win season is reasonable, although I still see them for fourth or fifth place in their first season in the Big 12.

BEST BETS: Oklahoma (10-1) and South Carolina (30-1) to win the national championship. That’s based on the betting odds. Who TheSportsNotebook actually picks straight-up comes later this week.