We are just hours away from learning Minnesota’s bowl destination and opponent. The final College Football Playoff rankings will be released on Sunday during the 11 AM central hour. Once those are out and the playoff field is set, bowl game announcements will begin trickling out, making official bowl matchups that are already beginning to trickle out from college football insiders.
With the Big 12 championship game wrapped up, we should have all the information we need to iron out who Minnesota will face in their bowl game, so I wanted to put together one final, abbreviated bowl projections ahead of Sunday’s formal announcement. While the playoff picture still has some questions that need to be finalized, we know that the Big Ten will have three playoff teams (Indiana, Ohio State, and Oregon), which means I can project with a good degree of confidence the rest of the Big Ten’s bowl slate.
Without further ado, here are GopherIllustrated’s final Big Ten bowl projections for the 2025 season:
College Football Playoff – Ohio State (First Round Bye)
College Football Playoff – Indiana (First Round Bye)
College Football Playoff – Oregon vs. Tulane
Citrus Bowl (Orlando, FL) – Michigan vs. Texas
ReliaQuest Bowl (Tampa, FL) – Iowa vs. Vanderbilt
Las Vegas Bowl (Las Vegas, NV) – Nebraska vs. Utah
Music City Bowl (Nashville, TN) – Illinois vs. Tennessee
Pinstripe Bowl (New York, NY) – Penn State vs. Pittsburgh
Rate Bowl (Phoenix, AZ) – Minnesota vs. Iowa State
GameAbove Sports Bowl (Detroit, MI) – Northwestern vs. Ohio
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Alamo Bowl (San Antonio, TX) – USC vs. BYU
LA Bowl (Inglewood, CA) – Washington vs. Boise State
In terms of changes that could happen as I write this during halftime of the Georgia/Alabama game for the SEC championship, pretty much everything centers on what happens with the SEC. If Georgia winds up blowing out Alabama, there’s a change that the Crimson Tide could get bounced from the playoffs. If that happens, there will be some questions marks about the opponents in the Citrus, ReliaQuest, and Music City bowls. I’m not sure we’ll get a second straight year of Michigan vs. Alabama, so Texas in the Citrus Bowl could stay as is. It’s a long shot, though, I’m not expecting to see Alabama dropped from the playoffs just because they had to play an extra game.
On the flip side, Oregon will have a chance to grab a first round bye if Alabama is able to comeback and beat Georgia. I imagine that there will be plenty of howling from SEC fans if the Big Ten winds up with three of the four byes, but that seems to be what last Tuesday’s CFP rankings sets up for should Alabama prevail.
Other than that, I feel pretty comfortable with these picks, including opponents (except for the GameAbove Sports Bowl – how the MAC teams get slotted to bowls has always been a bit of a black box I haven’t cared enough to look into). That doesn’t mean I can promise that these are all guaranteed, but these are picks that I’m happy to put my name on.
It helps that a good deal of the drama has already been taken out of the Big Ten’s bowl picture. Brett McMurphy, who is probably the name I trust most when it comes to breaking bowl-related news, tweeted earlier Saturday that much of the Big Ten’s lineup has been set, with the Citrus, ReliaQuest, Vegas, Music City, and Pinstripe bowls have their Big Ten teams locked in as I have listed above (and as was my projection on Tuesday, lest you think I’m trying to claim confirmed reports as projections!).
That would leave Minnesota and Northwestern still unconfirmed, with the Rate and GameAbove Sports bowls to be filled. The Star Tribune’s Randy Johnson quotes from the executive director of the Fiesta Sports Foundation, which runs the Rate Bowl, that would point towards Minnesota being the pick.
Those quotes also included a clue towards who the opponent might be – “We sure wouldn’t mind a Minnesota-Iowa State matchup to harken back to the old times,” Moses said. Add that comment to a note from The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman that indicated that Iowa State would prefer a Rate Bowl matchup against Minnesota instead of a return to the Memphis-based Liberty Bowl, where the Cyclones played in 2023.
Those two items are enough to lead me to project Iowa State as the opponent for Minnesota in the Rate Bowl. TCU, who had been my pick in Tuesday’s article, appears to be headed to the Pop-Tarts Bowl, so the other Big 12 team that could be in the running for the Rate Bowl bid is Cincinnati. As of writing this article, I haven’t yet seen any news confirming the Big 12’s bowl plans, so that side of the potential matchup is a bit more open ended.
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