When we first shared bowl picks from TBI, we mentioned the need during bowl season to be particularly attuned to opt-outs and other significant roster shifts. Those changes led me to make a manual adjustment to the picks for 6 bowl games:
- Dropping Oregon by 14 points, as they were missing up to 31 players by the day of the game
- Dropping Pitt by 6 points because of the absence of Kenny Pickett
- Dropping Arizona State by 6 points because of cluster opt outs at RB and CB
- Dropping Rutgers by 6 points because of limited practice and travel difficulties
- Dropping Ohio State by 4 points because of cluster opt out at WR
- Dropping LSU by 10 points because of having only 38 scholarship players available
In those 6 games, we ended up going 5-1 but would have been 1-5 without the adjustments.