The New Year’s Six bowl games, which include the College Football Playoff semifinals, understandably draw the most interest among fans. But if you are playing in a college football confidence pool, correctly picking and ranking all 43 college football bowl games is more vital than just correctly picking the bigger bowl games. The first college football bowl games kick off on December 16 and those first few contests can be the most challenging to form a strategy for with programs not everyone is as familiar with.
With more players sitting out and entering the transfer portal before the start of bowl games, expert advice could be more useful than ever when making college football bowl confidence pool picks. Six of the first seven college football bowl games have a spread of 3.5 points or fewer according to the latest odds from the SportsLine consensus, so is there an edge hiding in those games that should make you feel better about picking the winner at a higher confidence point amount? Before entering any college football bowl confidence pools, be sure to see the college football picks from SportsLine’s Emory Hunt.
Hunt is the founder and CEO of Football Gameplan, which has been supplying analysis of all levels of football since 2007. He is a former running back for the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns and knows the game from a player’s perspective. He enters the 2023-24 college football bowl season on a 46-27 roll on all college football picks, returning nearly $1,700 for $100 players during that span. Anybody following him is way up.
So before filling out your college football pool picks, you need to see Hunt’s college football bowl picks. He has analyzed each bowl matchup and ordered every game by level of confidence. He’s sharing his picks over at SportsLine.
Top college football bowl confidence predictions
One of the top 2023-24 college football bowl confidence picks from Hunt: He likes the No. 21 Tennessee Volunteers to beat the No. 17 Iowa Hawkeyes in the 2024 Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1 at 1 p.m. ET. Iowa had one of the worst offenses for a ranked team in recent college football memory, highlighted by being shut out by Michigan (26-0) in the Big Ten Championship Game. The Hawkeyes averaged 12.1 points per game over their final seven games but still went 5-2 over that span against Big Ten opponents.
However, Tennessee’s offense is at another level than teams like Illinois, Nebraska and Northwestern, which Iowa was able to defeat in defensive battles. The Volunteers averaged 31.5 points per game and closed the season with a 48-24 win over Vanderbilt on November 25. Quarterback Joe Milton III threw for 383 yards and accounted for six total touchdowns (four passing) with a 91.2 QBR in that victory. Hunt expects this explosive SEC offense to be too much for Iowa’s vaunted defense to contain, a big reason why he’s including the Volunteers near the top of his bowl confidence picks. See who else to pick here.
How to make college football bowl confidence picks
Hunt is also going all-in on a double-digit underdog with one of his most confident picks. Picks like these could be the difference between winning your 2023-24 bowl confidence pool and going home empty-handed. You can see who it is and get every pick for every game at SportsLine.
So which order should you rank teams in your college football confidence pools, and which massive underdog do you need to be all-in on? Visit SportsLine to see the full college football bowl confidence picks, and see what teams won’t disappoint, all from the college football expert who crushed sportsbooks this season.
