I made a bunch of college football predictions this year. Back in August, I decided to predict how every conference would finish and then last month I wrote about every bowl game.
ACC
I predicted three of the fourteen actual places (Clemson, Wake Forest, and Duke). I wrote that Wake Forest would be a team that surprised people and I was right about that one. They started off the year strong.
Big Ten
I was pretty bad in the conference I watch the most. I only picked two and it was actually the bottom dwellers in the East (Maryland and Rutgers). I did predict that Penn State would beat Michigan though, so good for me.
Big 12
Hey, a little better with three out of ten. I chose wisely with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Kansas (looks like I am good at picking the losers).
Pac-12
Wow, this one is embarrassing! A big fat zero! I guess I was a little too high up on Herm Edwards. Talk about a mediocre conference, the majority of the teams went 4-5 in conference play (or does that mean there is great parity?).
SEC
I followed up the Pac-12 debacle with my best showing yet! Five out of fourteen. I was right about Georgia, Florida, Vandy, Ole Miss, and Arkansas (seriously, I am putting money on teams to finish last in conference play next year).
AAC
A respectable 3/12. And yes, it was East Carolina, UConn, and Tulsa. To be fair though, I did have Cincinnati and Memphis competing for their respective divisions, so it is not like I screwed things up horribly.
C-USA
Another 5/14. I picked FAU and looked smart talking about Lane Kiffen needing a good season to turn that into a bigger job. I also had Marshall, UTSA, UTEP, and Old Dominion.
MAC
Wow, another one that I got completely wrong. I am an idiot.
Mountain West
Only one right in this one and it was Boise State. Again, one of those conferences where I know very little.
Sun Belt
Five out of ten in my favorite small conference! App State, Coastal Carolina, UL-Monroe, Texas State, and Southern Alabama. I would have been perfect in Division B, but I flipped Arkansas State & UL-Lafayette. I was also close to my prediction about App State going undefeated (I guess I was right when I said they would not, but would be close).
I did have two of the four teams in the CFP, which is probably not that impressive since I said Oklahoma and Clemson. I also had Clemson in the finals, but I thought they would win it. I am happy to be wrong there. I was only at 21.77% correct with my picks, but honestly, I do not think that is all that bad. Consider that the ACC and Pac-12 had multiple teams with 4-5 (or 4-4) conference records, the standings were determined by tie-breakers. I bet some of those could have been flipped around and been where I predicted…yep, totally my excuse.
So how did I do in the bowl games?
I ended up 27 out of 40 (67.5%). That was better than last year (56%), so I achieved my goal! I was 21/40 against the spread (52.5%) and 12/40 with the O/U (30%). I actually did worse in those two. I ended up joining a pool where you had to assign confidence points. I was in the lead for a long time, but then the Michigan game killed me. I took the Wolverines to win that one, but assigned it a very low confidence. However, a few people took Alabama and put a huge amount of points on it, which paid off, but that seemed like such a risk.
