Jon Wilner’s bowl projections

Holiday bowl or better is always a good season. Always. 

That being said, I don’t get all the Colorado love. They have played two tough defenses, USC and Michigan and they were absolutely worked in both games. 

I know, I know. The USC game had a close score. BUT, Colorado forced 4 TO’s on USC compared to Colorado only giving up 1. And, USC had the “BYU win” wrapped up, dominating in every statistical category. Yeah, that score was close, but the game wasn’t. 
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They have to play Stanford, UCLA, Utah who are all very similar to USC and Michigan defensively. They have to play WSU, who is better than they are offensively. 
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And, they have to play Arizona, which is their only gimmee game, but Arizona always wins a game they shouldn’t every year (see Utah, 2015). 
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Colorado is a lot better than they have been, but they are still a 6 or 7 win team. 

I think his inclusion of the $$$$ in the bowl projections is spot on.

Sadly if you think bowls are the same reward they used to be just look at last year and Utah to the Veggie Bowl.

Did I just insinuate we’re better off but not much better off than the MWC bowl picture, with $$$$ trumping record for an upper tier bowl? Yep, unless you qualify for the CFP it’s all about the $$$$, not the best match-ups.

I seem to recall that the conference rules state all bowl money gets combined and then evenly divided between all of the conference teams – even those that don’t qualify for a bowl.

Or am I wrong?

Found reference to it as I suspected.

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/threads_and_laces/2014/12/rose-bowl-appearance-oregon-pac-12-payout.html

The conference evenly splits the money teams receive from television contracts, bowl payouts and events like conference championships.