What coulda been bowl watch … For those who were otherwise engaged last evening, Alabama overwhelmed Michigan State 38-0 in the Cotton Bowl to earn a spot in the national championship game on January 11th against #1 ranked Clemson which had dispatched Oklahoma with a convincing 38-17 win in the Orange Bowl. So its a little strange that having picked its national title teams college football has a bunch more bowls today that don’t mean much of anything. And that’s an unfortunate thing because a very good case can be made that at least two of today’s bowl games – Stanford versus Iowa in the Rose and Ohio State and Notre Dame in the Fiesta – could just as easily have qualified as the ‘other’ two national quarterfinal games this year if there were an 8-team playoff. GBN Associate Editor and resident college football guru Pigskin Paul Guillemette previews these two games with an eye to the 2016 draft. The highlight of the OSU-ND game, at least from a draft watchers perspective is that the game features potentially one of the very best head-to-head match-ups of upcoming draft prospects when Buckeyes’ DE Joey Bosa, one of the top 2-3 rated prospects for the upcoming draft, goes against Irish OT Ronnie Stanley, who is also considered to be a legitimate top 5-10 candidate. The Bosa-Stanley dual, though, is not today’s only great OT-DE match-up as Oklahoma State DE Emmanual Ogbah will be going against Mississippi LT Laremy Tunsil in tonight’s Sugar Bowl (8:30 PM ET; ESPN). Elsewhere today, Northwestern plays Tennessee in the Outback Bowl (Noon ET; ESPN2) and Michigan meets Florida in the Citrus Bowl (1 PM ET; ABC) as the SEC and Big Ten continue their annual bowl challenge. Have a great day everyone and even better New Year!
