One of the best parts about the college football postseason is playing in college football bowl confidence pools. And with 44 games running over the course of 25 days this winter, it’ll be a marathon, not a sprint, to see who winds up on top of the 2021-22 college football bowl picks standings. In bowl confidence pools, the objective is simple: the more confident you are that a team will win the game outright, the more points you assign.
The 2021 Cotton Bowl is one of two College Football Playoff semifinals and top-ranked Alabama is the only team favored by double-digits playing in a game after Christmas. But No. 4 Cincinnati will have a chip on its shoulder as the first Group of Five team to make the CFP and the biggest underdog of the college football bowl season. So might you even consider picking them in a massive upset?Before entering any college football bowl confidence pools, be sure to see the college football picks from SportsLine’s Matt Severance.
Matt Severance is a well-connected writer and handicapper who has worked in the industry since 2005. He wrapped up the 2021 college football regular season as one of SportsLine’s top experts, ending the year on a 49-32 run on his college football picks, returning almost $1,200 to $100 bettors during that span. Anybody who followed him saw some huge returns.
So before filling out your college football pool picks, you need to see Severance’s college football bowl picks. He’s using a season’s worth of data gathered from game film and analytics. He has analyzed each bowl matchup and ordered every game by level of confidence. He’s only sharing his final picks over at SportsLine.
Top college football bowl confidence predictions
One of the top 2021-22 college football bowl confidence picks from Severance: He likes the Florida Gators to knock off the UCF Knights in the 2021 Gasparilla Bowl, which will be played on Dec. 23 at 7 p.m. ET.
It’s been a trying season for the Gators, who fired head coach Dan Mullen last month and then hired Louisiana head coach Billy Napier to run the program earlier this month. However, interim head coach Greg Knox was able to lead Florida to a win over rival Florida State to become bowl eligible. With Napier building his coaching staff and focusing on recruiting, Knox will continue to lead bowl preparations, and another game against an in-state school should help motivate everyone.
Meanwhile, Gus Malzahn’s first season at UCF was a decent one (8-4), but his offense sputtered for significant stretches of the season and a talent disparity could be too much to overcome. UCF has had 333 yards of total offense or fewer in three of its last four games and Severance is extremely confidence that Florida will pick up the win in this one.
How to make college football bowl confidence picks
Severance also is assigning a huge confidence ranking of 27 to a smaller program playing one of the Power Five schools. Picks like these could be the difference between winning your 2021 bowl confidence pool and going home empty-handed. You can see who it is, and get every pick, for every game at SportsLine.
So which teams should you rank in which order in your football confidence pools? And what team outside a Power Five conference do you need to be all-in on? Visit SportsLine to see the full college football bowl confidence picks, and see what teams won’t disappoint, all from the No. 1 college football expert who crushed sportsbooks this season.
