With one team sent packing from the College Football Playoff in the opening round, another knocked out in the quarterfinals and a series of head-to-head losses to the Big Ten, this bowl season has left egg on the face of the SEC.
The conference can still claim the national championship should Texas beat Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl and then beat one of Notre Dame or Penn State in the championship game.
To this point, however, how the SEC has fared in both the playoff and the traditional bowl slate has put a huge dent into the league’s aura of invincibility. With two teams left in the playoff and wins in bowl matchups against the SEC, the Big Ten has made an unimpeachable case for being seen as the Bowl Subdivision’s most powerful conference.
While the postseason continues this week with the national semifinals, the non-playoff bowl slate wrapped up on Saturday with Buffalo beating Liberty in the Bahamas Bowl.
Here are the biggest winners and losers from this year’s postseason cycle:
No team has been more impressive than Ohio State, which ran all over Tennessee in the opening round of the playoff and then avenged a regular-season loss to Oregon by routing the Ducks 41-21 in the Rose Bowl. Heading into the semifinals, the Buckeyes are the obvious team to beat for the national championship. Texas was only lightly tested by Clemson but needed double overtime to escape Arizona State in the Peach Bowl with a 39-31 win. Penn State’s defense has gotten things done through two games, bottling up SMU in a 38-10 victory and then containing Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty in the Fiesta Bowl. Notre Dame’s defense has done the Nittany Lions one better, clamping down on Indiana’s high-powered offense to open the playoff and holding Georgia to just 62 rushing yards and 4.9 yards per play in the Sugar Bowl.
ROSE BOWL:Previewing of Ohio State-Texas matchup
ORANGE BOWL: Previewing of Penn State-Notre Dame matchup
If the Big Ten has been the class of the Power Four, the AAC has risen to the top of the postseason pecking order in the Group of Five. The conference finished 6-2 in bowl games, including 3-1 in games against the Power Four: Florida beat Tulane 33-8 in the Gasparilla Bowl, but Memphis beat West Virginia 42-37 in the Frisco Bowl, East Carolina topped North Carolina State 26-21 in the Military Bowl and Navy beat Oklahoma 21-20 in the Armed Forces Bowl.
It’s been quite a postseason for the SEC — more on that in a minute — but Florida’s win against Tulane caps a terrific second half and should inflate the Gators’ bandwagon heading into next season. Once on the brink of throwing in the towel on the Billy Napier era, the school’s decision to bring Napier back in 2025 sparked a major turnaround. One of the biggest reasons for optimism, rising sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway, threw for 305 yards as Florida pulled away from the Green Wave in the third and fourth quarters to win eight games for the first since 2020.
First the Cornhuskers snapped the Power Four’s longest bowl drought by beating Wisconsin in November and booking a spot opposite Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl. Better yet, they actually beat the Eagles, 20-15, for the program’s first bowl victory since the 2015 season. The win included more issues on special teams and saw Nebraska barely cross the finish line and nearly hand the game to the Eagles, so there’s still plenty to work on heading into Matt Rhule’s third year.
The defending national champions limped through most of this season behind one of the worst offenses in modern program history but exploded late, beating Ohio State to end the regular season and then Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl. The 19-14 win saw Michigan rack up just 190 yards of total offense and 2.3 yards per carry. But credit the Wolverines for taking advantage of Alabama’s miserable performance out of the gate: The Crimson Tide got started with a turnover on downs, a fumble, an interception and another fumble, handing Michigan an insurmountable 16-0 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The league is 8-6 overall in the postseason, joining the Big Ten as the only Power Four leagues with a winning record in bowl play. The SEC can tout strong bowl wins by Florida, Arkansas (Texas Tech in the Liberty Bowl), LSU (Baylor in the Texas Bowl) and Mississippi (Duke in the Gator Bowl), not to mention two playoff wins by Texas. But the head-to-head results against the Big Ten are embarrassing: Missouri beat Iowa, but South Carolina lost to Illinois, the Alabama lost to Michigan, Texas A&M lost to Southern California and Ohio State creamed Tennessee.
If under much less scrutiny than the SEC, this has been a nightmare run for the ACC, starting with both SMU and Clemson losing on the road in the opening round of the playoff. Overall, the league went 2-11 in bowl play, with wins from Syracuse (Washington State in the Holiday Bowl) and Louisville (Washington in the Sun Bowl). In addition to N.C. State, the worst losses have come from Pittsburgh, which fell 48-46 in six overtimes to Toledo in the GameAbove Sports Bowl; Miami, which dropped a 42-41 decision to Iowa State in the Pop-Tarts Bowl; and North Carolina, which turned the page to the Bill Belichick era by losing 27-14 to Connecticut in the Fenway Bowl.
They won’t throw a parade for this Alabama team — but maybe they should, to celebrate the fact that this miserable season is finally over. The year ended with that loss to Michigan, the latest letdown for a team that lost to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma during the regular season but was somehow still plugged as a worthy playoff participant. Yeah, right. Losing to the Wolverines ushers in the program’s most anxiety ridden offseason in over a generation, as the spotlight turns fully onto coach Kalen DeBoer and his efforts to bring the Tide back into the national mix.
In an era where most high-end NFL prospects opt out of the postseason and more and more transfers are heading into the portal before bowl games, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter should be applauded for playing in the Alamo Bowl against Brigham Young. Not that things went well from there: BYU was all over the Buffaloes in a 36-14 win that erases some — but only some — of the goodwill built up during a breakthrough 2024 season. Sanders threw for a season-low 208 yards and had multiple interceptions for only the second time in his two years in Boulder.
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