2021 Bowl Confidence Points - Updated After Las Vegas Bowl

January 5, 2022 by Staff

NOTES:
- On Tuesday, December 28, UCLA had to pull out of the Holiday Bowl scheduled to be played that night against NC State. The pregame parade was underway when the announcement was made.

- On Monday, December 27, Boise State pulled out of the Arizona Bowl, a day after Miami pulled out of the Sun Bowl. Central Michigan switched from being Boise State's opponent in the Arizona Bowl to becoming Washington State's opponent in the Sun Bowl.

- On Sunday, December 26, Boston College had to pull out of the Military Bowl the day before the Eagles were to face East Carolina in Annapolis, Maryland.  It's the third time since 2018 that Boston College had a bowl game effected. The 2018 First Responders Bowl was canceled by dangerous weather and the school opted out the 2020 bowl season after a 6-5 regular season.

- On Sunday, December 26, Virginia had to pull out of the inaugural Fenway Bowl. The Cavaliers were scheduled to face SMU on Wednesday, December 29.

- On Thursday, December 23, Hawaii had to pull out of the Hawaii Bowl which was scheduled to be played the following day. That game has been canceled and Memphis gets left with a trip to Hawaii with no game. It's the second straight year the Hawaii Bowl has been canceled for reasons related to covid.

- Rutgers on Thursday, December 23 accepted the invitation to replace Texas A&M in the Gator Bowl. The Aggies had announced the previous day that it has pull out of the game due to covid issues within the program which left the availability of only 38 players for practice and just 13 on defense. This will be the first bowl game for the Scarlet Knights since 2014. The line opened at 11.5 at 5Dimes in favor of Wake and the Congrove Computer Rankings favor the Demon Deacons by 11.08. Wake Forest was a 6.15-point underdog to the Aggies.

Confidence Points is a popular pick 'em game for college football fans that presents the dual challenge of picking the winners and assigning points to each pick. We can't count the Championship game since we don't know who's playing in it, so that leaves us with 37 games we can use after the Hawaii, Military, Fenway, Arizona and Holiday bowls were canceled. Assign 37 to the pick that gives you the most confidence, and assign 1 to the pick that gives you the least confidence. No number can be assigned more than once. A perfect record this year would now be a total score of 703.

Here is how the computer (Congrove Computer Rankings at CollegeFootballPoll.com) ranks its' picks, based on its' projected margin of victory for each bowl winner (Note: the computer captured 72% of the 325-point perfect score in 2020, after capturing 69% of a 780-point perfect score in 2019).

(Original upload: December 6. Last update for results and schedule changes: January 4)

Also See: 2020 Confidence Points, 2019 Confidence Points, 2018 Confidence Points, 2017 Confidence Points