While the end of the college football regular season is always sad, it does bring joy knowing that one of the best times of the year has arrived in bowl season.
With the first year of the 12 team playoff, the bowl slate will be looking a little different. Excluding the 11 games that are a part of the CFP, there are a total of 36 bowl games that will take place over the next month.
In the current landscape of the sport bowl games have certainly been diminished with the now popular choice by players to opt out, but we are still talking about the great sport of college football which is always something to be excited about.
Here are the 3 best matchups of this college football bowl season outside of the College Football Playoff:
Georgia Tech vs Vanderbilt - Birmingham Bowl (Dec. 27)
Haynes King vs Diego Pavia is all that needs to be said. This is a matchup that will have die-hard college ball fans giddy.
These were two of the most surprising teams this college football season as each flew over their expected win totals and played spoiler in memorable wins that kept their opponents out of the playoff.
I would not expect many players to opt-out of this one as a bowl game appearance means a lot to these two programs who have made it here a combined one time in the past five years.
Most importantly this will be the last time we get to see Diego Pavia play college football which you will not want to miss.
BYU vs Colorado - Alamo Bowl (Dec. 28)
Personally I would have loved to see Colorado take on Miami, but BYU is not a bad consolation. Not too long ago it looked like this was going to be the matchup in the Big 12 Championship, but instead they will do battle in the Alamodome.
These teams have been must watch all season with exciting plays and games coming down to the wire. Head coach Deion Sanders already said that his guys, including Shedeur Sanders and Tavis Hunter, will play and hopefully that influences BYU players to do the same.
Every year the Alamo Bowl is one of the most exciting and high scoring bowl games, and I expect no different with this top-25 matchup.
Syracuse vs Washington State - DIRECTTV Holiday Bowl (Dec. 27)
To me a great bowl game includes two things: lots of points and a close score. This one should be just that.
These teams have two of the top offenses in college football which give this game the second highest total points over/under of bowl games at 61.5.
Syracuse quarterback Kyle McCord has been absolutely dealing this year (outside of that one half against Pitt) as he leads the country in passing yards and led the Orange offense to 30+ points in their last five games.
On the other side, the Cougars began the year extremely hot at 8-1 but fell off hard dropping their last three games against some bad opponents. They are led by dual threat QB John Mateer who is electric to watch making plays all over the field.
With these two teams, who have shown flashes of greatness this season, and a quarterback matchup between McCord and Mateer this bowl game is a must watch.