CBS Sports bowl projections send Penn State to New Years Six bowl
The preseason bowl projections are starting to be updated for the final times before the start of the 2023 college football season, and Penn State is picking up another projection for a potential New Years Six bowl destination this season.
CBS Sports writer Jerry Palm, known for his bowl projections and NCAA tournament bracket predictions, updated his bowl projections for the 2023 season. In them, Penn State gets paired up with Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl on Dec. 29. Both teams make the Cotton Bowl as at-large bids according to Palm with Penn State getting the Big Ten’s top available bowl bid after the College Football Playoff field is set.
“Penn State may suffer again from sharing a division with Michigan and Ohio State, or it could turn all this on its head, but I have the Nittany Lions in the Cotton Bowl against Big 12 runner-up Kansas State,” said Palm.
Penn State’s last trip to the Cotton Bowl was quite successful, of course. Penn State outscored Memphis 53-39 in what was the highest-scoring Cotton Bowl in the game’s history. Journey Brown powered the running game with 202 rushing yards and two touchdowns in what turned out to be his final game with the Nittany Lions. The 53 points scored is a Penn State school record for a bowl game, topping the 50 points scored in the 1989 Holiday Bowl against BYU.
Palm has Michigan and Ohio State making the College Football Playoff for a second straight season. Palm sends Michigan to the Rose Bowl as the no. 2 seed in the College Football Playoff to face no. 3 seed Alabama. Ohio State is Palm’s no. 4 seed in the Sugar Bowl to face no. 1 Georgia, a rematch of last year’s semifinal matchup that was nearly won by the Buckeyes.
If the season shakes out similarly to last season, then Penn State could have a few bowl possibilities in the New Years Six lined up. While Palm has Penn State in the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl could still be in the picture as well.
The Orange Bowl matchup Palm has predicted will be Florida State and LSU, a rematch of their highly anticipated season opener. Florida State would be in as the ACC’s representative as the ACC champion. LSU would be there as the highest-ranked option from the SEC, Big Ten, or Notre Dame. If Penn State was to finish ranked higher than LSU, then Penn State would be the team going to Miami instead of the Tigers.
As Palm explains, the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl lose their automatic qualifiers with the Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC, and Big 12 this year as host sites for the College Football Playoff semifinals. So unlike last year, a team like Penn State wouldn’t be automatically slotted to play in the conference’s AQ tie-in game like the Rose Bowl, or LSU in the Sugar Bowl. That leads to a wide-open New Years Six scenario in play with two teams from the Big Ten and SEC each in Palm’s playoff projection.
That also leaves future Big Ten member USC, the presumed Pac-12 champion according to Palm’s projections left as a sort of wild card too. Palm has USC matching up with Boise State, the highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion, in the Fiesta Bowl.
Palm also has Clemson taking on his Big 12 championship pick, Texas, in the Peach Bowl. Texas would be blocked from the Big 12’s tie-in to the Sugar Bowl as well.
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