Bowl Projections: Pittsburgh Panthers and More Longshot BCS Bowl Crashers

The BCS does a great job in rewarding teams that have great seasons by allowing them to play in their prestigious bowl games. However, sometimes a team will sneak in with a mediocre record, like this year in the Pittsburgh Panthers. 

At a very average 5-5 heading into this week’s games, the Panthers have an outside shot at winning their Big East conference and making one of the BCS bowl games. It looks like a crazy thought, but with two wins in their final two games, Pittsburgh can sneak in. 

The teams they are chasing right now are Louisville, Rutgers, Cincinnati and West Virginia. Every team that is ahead of them right now all have two conference losses like Pittsburgh and have games that could cause them to suffer their third conference loss. 

This week, Pittsburgh plays West Virginia, and they already have a win over Louisville. They just need Rutgers to lose in their final game of the year against Connecticut, as well as suffer another loss to a Cincinnati team that is scrambling to pick up the pieces after losing their starting quarterback to a bad injury. 

Pittsburgh will get past West Virginia this week by using their very underrated pass rush, while the next week, they run up the score on a bad Syracuse defense that is giving up an overwhelming 27 points per game. 

However, Pittsburgh will not be the only team that sneaks into a BCS bowl game by winning their conference. The Virginia Cavaliers from the Atlantic Coast Conference will come crashing in as an unranked team. 

Virginia has to beat the No. 5 team in the country in Virginia Tech this week. This seems like a tough task to undertake, but the game is at home and Virginia is coming in with one of the better defenses in college football. 

This week they, will shut down a good Hokies rushing attack, forcing them to win this game using their passing game. In Virginia Tech’s lone loss this year, they could not move the ball through the air, only gaining 125 yards. 

In the ACC Championship game, Virginia will use the same defensive strategy to shut down a struggling Clemson Tigers team. Clemson used to have an explosive offense, but has fallen on hard times as of late. 

Just like Virginia will sneak into a BCS bowl game by winning their conference championship game, Utah will fall into the Pac 12 Title game and upset the Oregon Ducks to earn a BCS bid in the Rose Bowl. 

Heading into the final week of the Pac-12 conference schedule, Utah sits in third place in the Pac-12 South. However, UCLA is going to be overmatched this week against USC. Arizona State has played awful as of late and will continue to fall this week against Cal, while Utah has the easiest game against Colorado. 

That will lead this Utes team into the first ever Pac-12 conference championship game against an Oregon team that showed last week that they can be beat. Utah will use what worked for USC in their upset victory last week over Oregon to pull off the even bigger upset. 

In fact, Utah has put together a top 20-defense this year, as they are only giving up 20 points per game. 

This will set up one of the biggest shockers in NCAA football history, as Utah wins the first ever Pac-12 title. They will take the trophy and head into the Rose Bowl to play the Big Ten winner, Michigan State. 

Three teams that all currently sit unranked in the BCS Standings. However, in two weeks, they will shock everyone by crashing the BCS scene. 

Follow @tjmcaloon