The 2025-26 FBS bowl schedule began on Dec. 13, but many confidence pools remain open for playoff quarterfinal picks and modification to other bowl picks as NFL opt-outs and other CFB news impact the matchups. The CFP continues with the quarterfinals on New Year's Day. Ohio State is a 9.5-point favorite over Miami in the Cotton Bowl, which is one of the biggest college football bowl spreads left on the board.
The latest college football bowl lines can be a helpful tool when locking in 2025-26 college football bowl confidence picks, but identifying several upsets can give you an edge over the field as well.
There are still compelling matchups to make college football bowl confidence picks on. There are two bowl games with a double-digit spread, such as Rice vs. Texas State (-14.5) on Jan. 2, and also four contests with a college football bowl line of a field goal or less, including Tennessee vs. Illinois (+3.5) in the Music City Bowl on Dec. 30. So, making college football bowl confidence predictions may be easier for some games but not so much for others.
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Before entering any college football bowl confidence pools, you need to see what the SportsLine Projection Model has to say.
The model simulates every FBS game 10,000 times, and it is 31-19 on its top-rated college football money-line picks since the beginning of the 2024 season.
Now, it has studied the latest college football odds (see the latest college football lines for each matchup this week on our college football odds page), simulated every single play for every bowl game, and the results are in.
One of the model's most confident picks is that USC (-6.5) gets a comfortable win over TCU in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 30. SportsLine's model has the Trojans prevailing nearly 70% of the time. The model also likes Texas State to beat Rice well over 70% of the time in the Armed Forces Bowl on Jan. 2.
The model has also made the call on who wins every other game, including multiple underdogs winning outright! These projections can give you a huge edge in your 2025-26 college football bowl picks, so you ABSOLUTELY need to see them before finalizing any picks.
So which teams should you back in your college football bowl confidence pools, and which underdogs win outright? ... Join SportsLine now to see who wins every single bowl game, all from the model that has simulated every game 10,000 times!
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Written by Ross Kelly
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