Inside The Huskies

Forecasters Have UW Ending Up In One of Two SoCal Bowl Games

The Huskies will play in the postseason either really early or late, according to the experts.
Dan Raley|
The Huskies seemingly have just two postseason options -- the Holiday and LA bowls.
The Huskies seemingly have just two postseason options -- the Holiday and LA bowls. | Dave Sizer photo

A lone Alamo Bowl representative will sit through Saturday's Washington-Oregon football game, taking notes and glad-handing people at Husky Stadium, maybe hand out a business card or a souvenir pin, though it seems there isn't much mystery to the postseason selection process this time.

Following the break-up of the Pac-12, the Huskies (8-3 overall, 5-3 Big Ten), as a legacy conference team, are eligible for the Alamo, Holiday, Las Vegas, LA and Sun bowls.

No doubt the outcome of the Oregon game will determine which one of these postseason games in California, Nevada or Texas chooses the UW, but the analysts are banking on Jedd Fisch's team turning up somewhere in one of two games within a 125-mile coastal radius in Los Angeles and south.

In their minds, the Huskies are bound for either the LA Bowl in Inglewood, California, at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 13, or the Holiday Bowl in San Diego at 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 2.

It's as early as can be in the postseason process or later than normal.

That means playing in either SoFi Stadium or Snapdragon Stadium, both fairly new facilities.

No one has mentioned it out loud, but the UW's 13-10 upset loss to Wisconsin on Nov. 8 in Madison did some serious damage to UW bowl hopes, greatly limiting the options.

To reach a New Year's Six bowl outing, which describes the oldest and most prestigious postseason destinations, teams now have to qualify for the 12-team College Football Playoff -- so the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton and Peach are out if you don't.

So that's not feasible for a three-loss UW entry.

Four media outlets in Athlon, Draft Kings Network, ESPN and Sports Illustrated have projected the Huskies will face San Diego State (9-2 overall, 6-1 Mountain West) in the LA Bowl. These teams have met three times, with the UW winning each time in Seattle, most recently 21-12 in 2012.

The Huskies have not played before in the LA Bowl, which was created in 2021 and has held four games, won by Utah State, Fresno State, UCLA and UNLV.

Three media organizations, College Football News, Off Tackle Empire and a second ESPN forecaster, have the UW meeting Georgia Tech (9-2, 6-2) for the first time ever in the first Holiday Bowl held outside of the month of December.

The Huskies have appeared in the Holiday Bowl four times, beating Nebraska 19-7 in 2010, losing to Texas 47-43 in 2001, losing to Kansas State 24-20 in 1999 and losing to Colorado 33-21 in 1996.

No one said it out loud, but the prognosticators are all presuming the UW loses to fifth-ranked Oregon (10-1, 7-1) in Saturday's season-ender.

Except possibly that Alamo Bowl scout, who doesn't figure to be in Montlake this weekend to watch the Ducks, who seemingly are CFP bound, win or lose.

An upset UW win over its rival naturally would bring the Alamo and Las Vegas bowls more into play for Fisch's team if they weren't already interested.

The Huskies last played in the Alamo game three years ago, with a Kalen DeBoer-coached team beating Texas 27-20, and they last appeared in the Vegas bowl in 2019, when they beat Boise State 38-7 in Chris Petersen's final game as coach.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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