The upcoming college football season will certainly be different from what fans have come to know over the past several decades for several reasons, mainly because of conference realignment and the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks are set up to succeed in this new era of college football, having adequately utilized the transfer portal to bolster a roster full of returning starters that has a great chance to compete at the top of the nation in the coming months.
With spring football still over a month away, Brett McMurphy at The Action Network released his preseason bowl projections for the new expanded CFP, using the 5+7 model (automatic spots for five conference champions, followed by the next 7 highest-ranked teams). In his projections, the Ducks are given a 6-seed, which means they would have lost the Big Ten Championship to Ohio State — a 2-seed — but still stand as the highest-ranked non-conference champion.
In the first round, that would pit Oregon up against Big-Ten foe Michigan, an 11-seed in McMurphy’s projection. This scenario, which has Oregon favored by a point vs. Michigan, sees the Ducks winning that game against the Wolverines, where they would go on to play 3-seed Florida State in the Peach Bowl.
McMurphy also has Oregon beating the Seminoles as 10-point favorites, landing them in the Cotton Bowl against Ohio State, which would give us a rematch of the conference championship game as McMurphy laid it out.
In his projections, McMurphy has the Buckeyes beating Oregon once again, this time as 0.5-point favorites, and going onto the National Championship Game against the Georgia Bulldogs, who are the No. 1 overall seed.
Though it would be another year falling short of a championship, I don’t think you would find many Oregon fans who would turn down that ultimate result in their first year in the Big Ten.
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