2024 College Football Bowl Previews (Dec 26th)

Quicklane Bowl: Bowling Green Falcons (7-5) vs Minnesota Golden Gophers (5-7)

What you need to know: Bowling Green is a team that loves chaos during their games. The Falcons lead the country in turnovers gained (27) and they’re 4th in turnovers lost (19)! BG will be without their star corner Jalen Husky who hit the portal. Minnesota struggled a lot of the year, their offense was bad early but their defense regressed as the season went on. Minnesota’s top 2 QBs both went to the portal. Minnesota is surprisingly a strong bowl team, PJ Fleck has never lost a bowl game as the head coach of Minnesota and Minnesota overall is riding a 6 game bowl win streak.

Previous Meetings: BG and Minnesota have met 4 times and the series is tied at 2 each. Bowling Green upsets have been a part of this series, the Falcons upset Minnesota in 2007 and in 2021 they upset Minnesota as 30+ point underdogs. Minnesota went on to win 9 games that year, while Bowling Green finished 4-8 so it never even made sense in hindsight either!

Motivation Edge: This is a tough one. On one hand BG will be excited to be in a bowl near home, but how do they feel about not getting to go south like other MAC teams? Minnesota probably isn’t super excited about this game either.

Best Bet: Minnesota -4 – This seems to be the way to go. As a BG alum I’d like to recommend BG to win but Minnesota’s bowl record is far too impressive to bet against.

ServPro First Responder Bowl: Rice Owls (6-6) vs Texas State Bobcats (7-5)

What you need to know: Rice had a pretty solid first season in the AAC, they managed to upset Houston and win their last 2 games to make this bowl. It was hard to tell what to expect from Rice week to week, occasionally they had some defensive struggles. The other downside for the Owls was none of their 6 wins were over a bowl team. JT Daniels was here but got hurt late in the year and medically retired. Texas State has an incredible first season under first year coach GJ Kinne. They opened with an upset over Baylor and led by TJ Finley their offense played well all year. Their defense occasionally struggled throughout the year so they had to win in shootouts.

Previous Meetings: These programs are in the same state but thanks to Texas State only recently moving up to FBS they have only met 4 times. Despite that, this series is tied at 2 each. Most notably in 1986 the Bobcats who only went 4-7 as a FCS (Div I-AA then) program beat Rice 31-6…ouch. Despite both programs being in-state and both scheduling a lot of in-state games they have no future meetings scheduled.

Motivation Edge: This is the first bowl game in Texas State’s history so it’s difficult to be more excited than they are. Bowls haven’t been common for Rice either so they are excited too, but Texas State has the edge too.

Best Bet: Over 60.5 – Both offenses are a lot of fun and neither defense is particularly threatening.

Guaranteed Rate Bowl: Kansas Jayhawks (8-4) vs UNLV Rebels (9-4)

What you need to know: These are two of the most fun teams in the sport. Both teams have offenses that run a variety of option concepts to attack defenses and put them in a blender. We’re in for the treat that these two are matched against each other. Kansas will be without their OC Andy Kotelnicki so it will be interesting to see if the offense looks different. Jalon Daniels had back issues come up earlier this year and never came back, he’s now in the portal but Jason Bean, otherwise known as the Mean Bean Machine has filled in well. UNLV’s OC Brennan Marion was a candidate for a few different jobs but that might be cooling off which is exciting for UNLV. Both teams can occasionally struggle defensive so we could have a shootout here.

Previous Meetings: These programs faced off for a home and home series back in 2002-2003, each team won at home during that series. They’re also scheduled to play each other again in Lawrence next year!

Motivation Edge: Both teams are going to be very excited for this one. Neither has much recent history of being in bowl games or winning them. This season is the best either has had in some time and they’re each looking to finish it off.

Best Bet: Over 64.5 – I’m betting on both of these offenses to go back and forth in a shootout.