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We are approaching a major milestone on the calendar. On Tuesday, it will flip from 2018 to 2019, marking the new year, at least by the Gregorian calendar. The excitement of celebrating New Year’s is mostly built on the expectation of what’s to come in the next 365 days, as we make predictions and resolutions.
Predicting things isn’t just saved for when the ball drops, however. The sports world is inundated with predictions, porjections and conjecture. During December, we are flooded with such picks during the height of the college football bowl season. With the Cincinnati Bearcats set to face the Virginia Tech Hokies in the Military Bowl on Monday, let’s take a look at how some of college football’s experts expect the game to go.
SB Nation - Cincinnati 31 Virginia Tech 23
Our pal Bill Connelly used a pretty simple system to make his picks, relying entirely on S&P+ projections. He s not only picking the Bearcats to win, but to cover the five-point spread as well.
Sporting News - Virginia Tech 30 Cincinnati 27
Bill Bender is a believer in Hokies quarterback Ryan Willis and is predicting an upset.
Athlon Sports - Cincinnati Wins
Three writers made their picks for Athlon and Steven Lassan, Mitch Light and Mark Ross all selected the Bearcats as the winner of the Military Bowl. An interesting wrinkle was added in here, as each writer added their level of confidence in their pick in comparison to their other ones. Light was the most confident in picking Cincinnati while Lassan was least confident.
ESPN - Cincinnati 30 Virginia Tech 17
ESPN staff writer Adam Rittenberg is optimistic about the future for the Hokies under head coach Justin Fuente, but that feeling doesn’t extend to this bowl game. To be fair, he owns up to going 19-22 in picking last year’s bowl games.
Bleacher Report - Virginia Tech Wins
Also using a five-point spread in favor of the Bearcats as a basis, Bleacher Report’s Joe Tansey is backing the Hokies.
USA Today - Cincinnati 5 Virginia Tech 1
That’s not the score being projected but the number of writers who selected the Bearcats vs. the number who selected the Hokies. Jace Evans, George Schroeder, Erick Smith, Eddie Timanus and Dan Wolken all took Cincinnati while Paul Myerberg picked Virginia Tech. That might be bad news since Myerberg has picked the most games correctly of the group this season.
We’ll provide our own picks for who will win the Military Bowl later this weekend, but for now, its good to see that entirely objective pundits are mostly favoring the Bearcats. Who do you think will win?