As the season progresses, lots of unknowns as to our bowl destination.
Our ability to win the MAC East and play in the MACC in Detroit is obviously a huge factor in our landing spot. If we make the MACC, it improves our standing and also could tend to limit participation in very early bowl games. (and presumably the Quick Lane I would think).
Just curious as to the board’s preferences for our bowl…Any favorites or is the opponent the most important factor?
1 Myrtle Beach Bowl vs Georgia Southern
2 Bahamas Charlotte Bowl vs Texas State
3 Boca Bowl vs New Mexico State
4 Camelia Bowl vs Coastal Carolina
5 Potato Bowl vs UNLV or Wyoming
Godaddy bowl i have a feeling we are winning mac championship
Some good picks, Nescadad!
I haven’t really looked that closely at potential opponents but Coastal Carolina would be a good one. We have never played in the Camellia Bowl although I haven’t seen any projections of us landing there.
I have seen more predictions as of late for a MAC team in Charlotte (formerly Bahamas) Bowl, as well as Myrtle Beach Bowl. Again, I have not seen any projections of us playing in either. (FWIW).
And yes, the Ventures Bowl in Mobile would be great…isn’t that played in n S. Alabama’s new stadium now?
P.S. answering my own question: yes, the 68 Ventures Bowl in now played in Whitney Hancock stadium, a new, 25,000 seat stadium that is the home field for U of South Alabama. Looks like a nice stadium.
Yep. They moved it over there a couple seasons ago. Not much to do in Montgomery over the Holidays as most of the Civil Rights museums are closed. But we haven’t been to the Camelia, Boca, Myrtle or Potato bowls. We’ve been to Mobile three times, most recently in 2019. Arizona is my least favorite. The day before NYE and difficult to get to.
I looked at conference pairings and interesting matchups. I’d like to play a western team since we’re the only MAC team that never schedules them.
And Arizona Bowl about the only bowl not on National TV…just streaming. Hope we don’t land there.
Since I have a Nevada trip staying there for over a month already booked for Dec-Jan, the only bowl I would go to would be the Arizona Bowl, and I have already obtained the promise of being able to stay with a Hawktalker in Phoenix.
Whether you like barstool or not, they treat that game like it’s their Super Bowl. Obviously more people will see the game if it’s on a ESPN network, but it’ll be bowl #18 out of however many. With Barstool, it’s 1 of 1 and they typically do a good job of promoting the game and featuring the teams on their platform. Would I still prefer an ESPN game? Probably, but going the barstool route wouldn’t be as bad of a landing spot as some think.
Barstool Bowl would probably only best one or two others imo (Boise because of the weather/travel combo, and maybe one other).
That said, watching via a stream is less and less of an issue every year. I wonder how many bars can/will stream games?
FWIW, Bonagura at ESPN has us playing in Frisco against Utah State (actual Frisco Bowl, not the temp we did a few seasons ago) while Schlabach has us in Barstool Arizona against Boise.
Jerry Palm of CBS has us in the Quick Lane (ugh), and Athlon has us in Boise vs. Wyoming while projecting OU vs Coastal Carolina in the 68 Ventures bowl. Don’t see why we wouldn’t be preferred for that bowl over OU…that would be a good match up in a warm destination…
If we had a solid reputation as a passionate fan base that traveled well, we’d be a much more coveted team for bowl placement. Sadly, Marshall has a far more plugged in fan base than we do. They had nearly 500 fans - mostly dressed in green -for their mid-week night game at App State last week.
Our fans won’t drive from the South Dayton or North Cincy burbs for a mid-week game in Oxford.
Not being a hot commodity in spite of having a decent team is on us.
Nes, saw another slate of bowl slot predictions from a Web site called Fansided…have no idea how legit they are but I did find their projected match up for Miami to be interesting.
As most here are probably aware, first year FBS program (and currently undefeated) James Madison has been ruled ineligible to participate in an FBS bowl (due to current NCAA regulations).
I also read that there may be a loophole that is there aren’t enough 6-6 teams to fill slots (and some projections are saying there won’t be), the NCAA may allow JMU to then fill a slot.
So, all that is an interesting backdrop to this site projecting Miami against JMU in the Camellia Bowl. That would certainly be a challenging match up for us but also garner the bowl some media attention.
Our offense with Aveon is just not….its like watching the Steelers offense right now….
We dropped 30 on the best defense in the MAC with Aveon at QB. I’m not sure what more we were supposed to do.
Yeah. There is a path to playing in a bowl for both JMU and Jak State. I wouldn’t advise signing up to play JMU.
Agreed. I think JMU is a very good team
And I was pretty confident about my Jax St pick this past weekend until the 80 yard pick six
USA Today updates their bowl predictions today. They have Miami in the 68 Ventures Bowl (Mobile) vs, Georgia Southern. But they also have Toledo in the Quick Lane, which I seriously doubt will happen.
I would think this would be a very nice bowl destination for the team, Coaches, families and fans.
I think all these bowl prediction sites are basically click bait until we get some real movement towards specific teams by the bowl operators and their puppet master ESPN. I do think the bowl sites’ Facebook pages are trying to gage interest among fan bases already. I’ve mentioned Miami a couple of times on the Myrtle Beach Bowl site. They asked “who’s interested” yesterday.
I know but it’s still fun!