After Week 1, the college football season is starting to heat up. Let’s take a look at some early New Year’s Six bowl projections.
With Florida State’s loss to Alabama, we see our first change to the playoff entering Week 2. Meanwhile we’ve seen our first team enter the New Year’s Six projections as we say goodbye to the Florida Gators, for now.
Week 2 offers plenty of more projection-shifting games such as Stanford traveling to USC and Ohio State hosting Oklahoma. Oh what wreckage we will see as we travel in to week three.
Here are our latest New Year’s Six projections.
Cotton Bowl Classic
Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic: Oklahoma (at-large) vs. Stanford (at-large)
Where: AT&T Stadium (Dallas, Texas)
When: Dec. 29 at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN
Stanford and Oklahoma are in the same position as some of the other teams in the New Year’s Six group are jockeying for spots as we are still in the infancy of college football season. The Sooners and Cardinal also share something heading into the second week, an early season test on the road. Stanford travels to USC and Oklahoma goes to Columbus to face the Ohio State Buckeyes.
The two games offer a chance for Oklahoma and Stanford to make their early season mark in shaking up the playoff race. This is also a chance for both teams to slip up early and their climb back to the playoff becomes more difficult.
Even if one or both of these teams were to lose, they are not out of the playoff discussion. A one-loss Stanford and/or Oklahoma still has the chance to make their way into the playoff. They would just need some help in the process.
Week 2 Impact: Let’s say both Stanford and Oklahoma both win, they won’t reach the playoff in the week three projection but they’ll move even closer to the front of the line for playoff contenders. A loss puts both teams back to square one, Oklahoma would suffer much more than Stanford in this situation. Oklahoma wouldn’t get a second shot at Ohio State in the regular season but Stanford could easily play USC for a second time this season. It’s not out of the question that we see Stanford vs. USC part two for the Pac-12 Title.