The Alamo Bowl will be a glorified Big 12 game.
The bowl announced which schools it is considering for the Dec. 28 game on Thursday. And all four of them are in the Big 12.
Iowa State, BYU, Arizona State and Colorado are the four teams under Alamo Bowl consideration. The four tied for first place in the Big 12 at 7-2, and ISU and ASU are playing each other on Saturday for the Big 12 title. The winner of that game will automatically qualify for the College Football Playoff.
If Arizona State wins, Colorado will go to the Alamo Bowl. If Iowa State wins, BYU will go to the Alamo Bowl. We’re not totally sure why Arizona State is in consideration at all. The only matchup between the four teams in the regular season was ASU’s Week 13 win over BYU. For as fun and chaotic as the ending of that game was, we don’t need a rematch in the bowl game. We’d rather watch a game between BYU and Colorado.
The Alamo Bowl is picking teams from the Big 12 because of the Pac-12’s demise. The game had traditionally pitted teams between the Big 12 and Pac-12 until only Oregon State and Washington State were left standing ahead of the 2024 football season.
The bowl announced before the season that a matchup of Big 12 teams was possible with the two pools of teams it had to pick from. The “Big 12 pool” contained the 12 teams that were in the conference in 2023 and 2024. The “former Pac-12 pool” contained the four Pac-12 teams that joined the Big 12 over the offseason, Oregon State and Washington State, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington.
Oregon is heading to the College Football Playoff; Arizona, UCLA, Utah, Stanford and Oregon State all failed to qualify for a bowl game; Washington State has the best record outside of anyone not-named Arizona State; and Colorado in the pool at 8-4. You can see why the Alamo Bowl is choosing among current Big 12 teams. Even if it’ll be bizarre to watch a conference game during the holidays.