Week 7 Bowl Projections: Shakeup for Pokes Reveals Peach, Cotton or Alamo

Despite an off week last week, there’s been a shakeup in Oklahoma State’s bowl projections. In fact, there is a pretty wide variance for where Oklahoma State could eventually end up playing in December or January.

Here is where various outlets have the Pokes after six weeks of the 2017 college football season.

Let’s start with the good. Both ESPN and CBS have OSU in a NY6 bowl indicating that they would have won the Big 12 or a Big 12 team would have made the CFP and OSU would have finished second. Jerry Palm has them in the Cotton against USC (be still, my heart) and as the only Big 12 team playing in one of the big six which marks them as the B12 winner. David Hale, on the other hand, has TCU in the CFP (lol) and bumps OSU to the Cotton Bowl with OU in the Alamo.

Maybe that’s an overreaction to OU’s loss to Iowa State, maybe not. Either way, it’s better than playing in the Camping World Bowl, which is where two other outlets have the Pokes. Also, this is what Bleacher Report noted about the Pokes’ current position.

The Big 12’s other borderline candidate is Oklahoma State, but who the heck have the Cowboys beaten? Yes, they demolished their three nonconference opponents (Tulsa, South Alabama and Pittsburgh) by a combined margin of 162-52, but those teams have a combined record of 4-13. Even if Oklahoma State runs the table from here, it probably isn’t sniffing the Top Four in the CFP rankings, and it isn’t in the Top 12 at the moment. [B/R]

That is a wildly myopic position to take on a team with seven regular season games left on its schedule plus a potential conference championship game. Probably isn’t sniffing the top four? Every one-loss (or better) conference winner has made the CFP except for Baylor/TCU in 2014. They finished No. 5 and No. 6 in the CFP. I’m pretty sure OSU is sniffing the CFP if it wins out. Get your facts straight.

Of course all of this chatter is moot if OSU doesn’t take care of business against Baylor, Texas, West Virginia and beyond. But it’s still nice to think about not playing in the Alamo Bowl again, even if a Mike Leach-Mike Gundy matchup would make for one of the great joint press conferences of our time.