Notre Dame Appearing In New Year’s Six In Most Bowl Projections
The 2020 college football season might have a fairly normal bowl lineup after all.
All conferences are now playing some form of a season this fall, keeping all bowl tie-ins and contracts intact. Matchups will be harder to predict, though, since bowl eligibility was tossed out the window for this year to help conferences fulfill their bowl agreements without worrying about having enough .500 or better teams in a year where there are fewer (or in some cases, zero) non-conference games that help win totals.
Notre Dame will likely earn an appealing bowl bid because its brings a large TV audience, but more importantly, because it looks like a formidable team that should be in the ACC title and New Year’s Six hunt all year.
The first round of full bowl projections foresees the same strong postseason outlook.
The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel projected Notre Dame to reach the Fiesta Bowl as a New Year’s Six at-large team, playing a rival — Pac-12 representative USC. It would be an 11th-hour extension of a rivalry that in July took a hiatus for the first time since 1945 when the Pac-12 moved to a conference-only schedule, wiping out the scheduled Nov. 28 game.
Mandel has Clemson representing the ACC in the College Football Playoff and Miami in the Orange Bowl.
Notre Dame’s most popular projected destination is the Orange Bowl, which it is eligible for this year because it joined the ACC for the season. The ACC’s Orange Bowl bid goes to the conference’s highest-ranked non-College Football Playoff team.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura both projected Notre Dame to play in the Orange Bowl, with the former tabbing Oklahoma as the opponent and the latter selecting Auburn. USA Today’s Erick Smith did the same, projecting a Notre Dame versus Georgia game. All three had Clemson as a CFP team.
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm does not project Notre Dame to be in a New Year’s Six game, instead slotting the Irish in the same place they went last year, Orlando, Fla. The Camping World Bowl is now the Cheez-It Bowl, and Palm projects Texas as Notre Dame’s opponent in it. In this scenario, Notre Dame has the ACC’s No. 4 bowl slot. He has Clemson in the CFP, Miami in the Orange Bowl and North Carolina as an at-large Cotton Bowl participant.
Most bowl games have not announced new dates yet. The New Year’s Six dates are set, though. The CFP semifinal games are the Rose and Sugar bowls this year and will take place on Jan. 1, as will the Peach Bowl. The Orange and Fiesta bowls are on Jan. 2, and the Cotton Bowl is Dec. 30.
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