Welcome to the new normal. Week 8 of the football season and Duke is bowl eligible. The 18th/21st ranked Duke Blue Devils gained bowl eligibility this past weekend in a 4OT thriller against the scrappy, yet not quite there yet Virginia Polytechnical Institute Hokies. The Blue Devils were able to avoid the upset and hold off the Hokies after Tommy Football/Baby Tebow Sirk clawed his way into the endzone for a 2 point conversion.
FSU's last second loss to Georgia Tech redefined the bowl landscape, as the loss drops FSU from a New Years Day Six bowl, consequently dropping the rest of the ACC down a notch in bowl priority. But not much to do there for Duke - just keep winning and somehow the priority will figure itself out.
The ACC affiliated bowls fall into different groups or tiers
CFP: Orange Bowl
New Year's Six (if certain conditions are met): Fiesta or Peach
Russell Athletic Bowl - in its own tier
Tier 1 Bowls: TaxSlayer or Music City, Belk, Pinstripe, and Sun
Tier 2 Bowls: Military, Independence, and Quick Lane
And now it's time for the speculation to happen. This year's bowl selection for the ACC will be incredibly screwy, as the Orange Bowl is hosting one of the CFP semi-finals, taking away an automatic bid for the ACC. Accordingly, we will not get any type of clear picture to the bowl scenario until at least November 8th, but more than likely not until the end of the season. That being said, I will do my best to continue to catalog the bowl predictions from "reputable" news sources.
Enough chatter, here are this week's projections.
ESPN ACC blog - TaxSlayer Bowl (Jacksonville, FL), Jan. 2nd
(ESPN bowl "experts")
Mark Schlabach: Belk Bowl (Charlotte) Dec. 30th v. Tennessee
Brett McMurphy: New Era Pinstripe Bowl (NYC) Dec. 26th v. Wisconsin
Jerry Palm (CBSsports) - Pinstripe v. Nebraska
Phil Steele (updated as of 10/20) - Belk Bowl v. Kentucky
CFN - No updated projections.
AthlonSports (not updated since Week 6) - Military Bowl (Annapolis) Dec. 28th v. Navy
SBNation - Belk v. Auburn (Rollins may die).
Orlando Sentinel (updated as of Oct. 21) - Russell Athletic Bowl (Orlando) Dec. 29 v. Oklahoma State
Syracuse.com (with Patrick Stevens being let go, I believe this site will no longer have ACC bowl projections)
SI.com (updated as of Oct. 22) - Russel Athletic v. West Virginia