Selection Sunday Gets A Trickle Down Effect From College Football Playoff

Selection Sunday is this weekend and while it isn't that exciting for Iowa fans, the advent of the College Football Playoff will have a trickle-down effect on the entire bowl business. Iowa will get into a secondary "who cares" game, but the bumble bees will travel well. We always do.

Fox Sports says shortly before Sunday’s NFL games kick off, the selection committee will announce the semifinal matchups to be played at the Rose and Sugar bowls. A couple hours later it will reemerge with the pairings for the Fiesta, Orange, Cotton and Peach bowls based on its final top 25 rankings.

At that point, conference and bowl officials across the country will Skype to figure out where 64 other teams will be spending the holidays. While not exactly the free-for-all of the old days, when bowls sometimes handed out bids as early as October, several conferences’ new bowl selection processes are both more flexible and more ambiguous than years past.

Fans trying to figure out where their teams may be headed will need to adjust to a new vernacular. Of the five power conferences, only the Big 12 and Pac-12 have retained a traditional pecking order for their non-playoff bowl partners – i.e. the Alamo Bowl gets second pick of Pac-12 teams, the Holiday Bowl gets third.

While the "Fire Ferentz" crowd is growing, Iowa fans should remember that next year's schedule is not a tough one by any means. The Hawkeye foes in 2016 will be a bigger challenge. I think Kirk has plenty of job security now, but a few more seasons like this one will get everyone even more restless. In the big picture, we must remember what the man has done in this town. We've had some HUGE seasons. More will come.

The Wisconsin and Nebraska games that closed our regular season at Kinnick were both VERY entertaining. The Husker game stings more than the Badger game, but both were fun to watch. Seeing the IA/WIS game with Jaymz Larson's TV team on the sideline was memorable. I've never had the chance to do so, and it is very cool. I stood right next to Reese Morgan and his D-line strategy sessions. Very cool vantage point.