In less than a week, we’ll know where Penn State plays its bowl game, but for now, projections remain rampant.
The team won’t be in the College Football Playoff, but with a 10-2 record, it should be a decent bet to make its fifth New Year’s Six bowl game in the past eight seasons.
A common destination bowl projections have Penn State going is the Peach Bowl, and the Athletic is now one of the outlets projecting Penn State to play in Atlanta.
We've reached the stage where most of our P5 Bowl Projections are based on real intel.
Most confident in:
Oklahoma-Arizona Alamo
Clemson-USC Holiday
Iowa in Citrus, Wisconsin in Nashville, Utah in Vegas and more.https://t.co/a6toRJKOAqhttps://t.co/a6toRJKOAq
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) November 28, 2023
Perhaps that most frequent opponent that appears next to Penn State in these projections is Tulane, and that’s who the Athletic has it playing against as well. What’s unique about this particular projection is that, per the Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, most of the projections for Power Five teams are “based on real intel.”
Mandel tweeted that the projections the outlet is the most confident in are:
Oklahoma vs. Arizona in the Alamo Bowl
Clemson vs. USC in the Holliday Bowl.
Oklahoma going to the Alamo Bowl could be good news for Penn State fans because, at 10-2, OU is a team that still has a shot at a New Year’s Six bid.
Penn State’s currently ranked No. 11 by the College Football Playoff committee, and Oklahoma is No. 13. Penn State’s expected to move into the top 10 later tonight when the new rankings come out on account of No. 10 Louisville losing at Kentucky on the last weekend of the regular season.
Penn State’s 3-1 in New Year’s Six games under James Franklin. It’s lone loss came to USC in the Rose Bowl in January 2017. Since then, Penn State’s won the Fiesta (Washington) and Cotton (Memphis) bowls and beat Utah in the Rose Bowl this past January.
