Bad Betting Advice: 2025 Bowl Season

Football season may be over in East Lansing, but for hard-core college football fans, the next few weeks truly are the most wonderful time of the year. Between Dec. 13 and Jan. 19, a total of 46 games will be played, including 35 traditional, non-playoff bowl games. That means that there is still data to analyze and potentially dubious bets to be placed.

In my previous Against All Odds piece, I went into some detail about how my computer expects the playoffs to shake out. In today's piece, I will primarily focus on the other 35 bowl games, with a few comments about the four first round playoff games.

Bowl Overview

Table 1 below shows a matrix that summarizes the number of games each conference plays against all the other conferences during bowl season.

Table 1: Matrix showing total traditional bowl games and 1st round playoff games each conference plays against each of the other conferences. Cells highlight in green feature two Power Four teams. Cells highlighted in blue feature two Group of Five or Pac-12 teams and cells highlighted in blue feature a Power Four team versus a Group of Five or Pac-12 team.

Cells highlighted in green represent games between two Power Four teams. Cells highlighted in blue represent games featuring two Group of Five or Pac-12 teams, and cells highlighted in yellow represent a Power Four team versus a Group of Five or Pac-12 team.

In total, 12 of the traditional bowls and two first round playoff games are matchups of two Power Four teams. In 15 of the games, two Group of Five teams will square off. In the remaining eight bowls and two playoff games, a Power Four team meets a Group of Five team.

The ACC got the most bowl bids at 11, but only seven of those games are against other Power Four teams. The SEC got 10 bowl bids, and all but one of them are against Power Four teams. Georgia also received a first-round playoff bye.

The Big 12 received seven total bowl bids, plus a playoff bye for Texas Tech. Only one Big 12 team will face a non-Power Four team in a bowl.

In the Big Ten, a total of 10 teams qualified for a bowl and Ohio State and Indiana both earned a playoff bye. Only six of the Big Ten teams not in the playoffs will face off against another Power Four team.

But how are the teams expected to perform? Table 2 below summarizes the predicted record for each conference based on the opening spread as well as by both my algorithm and ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI).

Table 2: Projected bowl records for each conference based on the opening Vegas spread and the forecasts from my computer and from ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI).

I have also tabulated the expected number of wins for each conference based on the opening spreads. For example, the SEC is currently favored in Vegas in eight of the 10 games, but the expected win total is slightly lower at 6.1. 

Table 2 includes the first round playoffs game, which includes the complete unnecessary and avoidable rematch between No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 9 Alabama. The SEC will necessarily pick up one win and one loss in that game. The only bowl game where the SEC is the underdog is LSU (+3) versus Houston in the Texas Bowl.

Ironically, both computers are picking LSU to upset Houston in that game. The FPI foresees a clean sweep for the SEC except for either Oklahoma or Alabama. But my computer is predicting an SEC upset loss in three of the other bowls.

Specifically, my computer is picking Illinois over Tennessee (-6.5) in the Music City Bowl, Iowa over Vanderbilt (-4) in the ReliaQuest Bowl, and No. 10 Miami over No. 7 Texas A&M (-3.5) in the first round of the playoffs.

The conferences are listed in Table 2 are in order of the expected bowl and first round wins. The ACC is only favored in five of the 11 bowl games, but the expected win total for the conference is the second highest at 5.7. 

But both computers are expecting the ACC to fall short of expectations. My machine is projecting only four wins while the FPI is forecasting just three wins.

My computer does have Miami beating Texas A&M in the playoffs, but that is the only good news that I have for the conference. Either my algorithm or the FPI is picking an upset loss in every bowl game where the ACC is favored other than Louisville (-9.5) versus Toledo in the Boca Raton Bowl.

My computer also has Clemson (+1) and Georgia Tech (+2.5) as double-digit underdogs to Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl and to BYU in the Pop Tarts Bowl, respectively. 

The only other bright spot might be Wake Forest (+3) and Virginia (+7) covering the spread (but still losing) to Mississippi State and Missouri in the Duke's Mayo Bowl and Gator Bowl, respectively. That said, the FPI is picking SMU (+1.5) to upset Arizona in the Holiday Bowl.

The opening Vegas lines project a 6-4 record for Big Ten teams. That includes the expected rout of No. 12 James Madison by No. 5 Oregon (-21) in the first round of the playoffs, Northwestern (-12.5) over Central Michigan in the GameAbove Sports Bowl at Ford Field and Washington's win over Boise State (+8.5) in the LA Bowl which already took place.

The FPI agrees with the Vegas lines across the board. This includes expecting USC (-5.5) to handle TCU in the Alamo Bowl, Penn State (-1) to beat Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl, Texas (-4.5) to take care of Michigan in the Citrus Bowl, and Utah (-14) to dismantle Nebraska in the Las Vegas Bowl.

My computer has a different view on the three remaining Big Ten Bowls. As mentioned above, it likes Iowa (+4) to upset Vanderbilt and Illinois (+6.5) to take upset Tennessee. However, it also is forecasting that New Mexico will upset Minnesota (-3) in the Rate Bowl in Phoenix.

The opening lines are predicting that Big 12 teams will go 5-2 in bowl games, but the excepted win total is almost exactly four wins. This is in agreement with with the prediction of both computers, but the path to get to a 4-3 record is different.

As discussed above, both computers are predicting the LSU will upset Houston. However, the FPI sees the games involving both Arizona schools going in a different direction. It has Arizona State upsetting Duke, but SMU upsetting Arizona.

In the Group of Five, the computers both predict that the American Athletic Conference and Mountain West teams will do slightly better than expected in the bowl season. The FPI is also bullish regarding the Sun Belt teams. In contract, my computer is forecasting a slightly underwhelming performance from the Sun Belt and a surprisingly strong effort from Conference USA.

Table 3 below provides the detailed summary of my computer's picks for all 39 traditional bowls and first-round playoff games. The Big Ten and other playoff games are sorted to the top of the table and the remaining games are sorted from biggest to smallest spread.

Table 3: Summary of Big Ten action in the traditional bowl games and first-round playoff games, including my algorithm's projected scores. The teams shaded in green are projected to cover by my computer. The teams shaded red are projected to cover by the FPI.

Bowl Season Bad Betting Advice

The section above highlighted several potential upsets and recommended picks against the spread. For one last time this season, Figure 1 below gives an overview summary of all my computer's projections for bowl season in comparison to the opening Vegas spread. The same data generated by EPSN's Football Power Index is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Comparison of the projected final margins of victory based on my algorithm to the opening Vegas lines for the 2025 bowl season.

Figure 2: Comparison of the projected final margins of victory based on ESPN's FPI to the opening Vegas lines for 2025 bowl season.

Figure 1 and 2 contain the same information as shown in Table 3, but in a more visual manner. The bowl season upset picks (the games appearing to the left of the vertical red lines in both figures) are summarized below in Table 4.

Table 4: Summary of upset picks for 2025 bowl season.

As discussed in detail above, the computers are both forecasting a large number of upsets during this bowl season. My computer has 13 upset picks while the FPI has a total of six. Two of those picks overlap resulting in a total of 17 upset picks combined.

Many of the picks listed in Table 4 were discussed above with Illinois over Tennessee (-6.5) as the biggest pick on the board. Other notable picks include East Carolina over Pittsburgh (-6) in the Military Bowl, San Diego State over North Texas (-6) in the New Mexico Bowl, and Memphis over N.C. State (-5.5) in the Gasparilla Bowl.  

For reference, a simulation of the full set of 39 games results in a predicted number of upsets as 13.76 plus-or-minus 2.93, which is an upset in 35% of the games. But this is not completely surprising when 14 of the games have an opening spread of three points or less and 23 of the games have a spread of seven points or less.

Based on historical performance, 40-45% of the picks in Table 4 are likely to be correct.

Regarding bets against the spread or on point totals, the computers have a limited number of suggestions. The FPI just has one pick against the opening spread, which is LSU (+3) to cover versus Houston. My computer does not have a pick with a high enough confidence level.

My computer has just one point-total bet in bowl season. That is for Nebraska and Utah to combine for more than 49.5 points in the Las Vegas Bowl. For what it is worth, this pick does meet the criteria as a "lock" pick even if my locks are performing below 45% for the year.

That is all the advice I have for you this season. Enjoy the bowls and Happy Holidays.