Buffs Await Sunday's Bowl Pairings Announcement
December 03, 2016 | Football, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — There is still more history for the 2016 Colorado Buffaloes to write.
It means they will have to put the sting of Friday night's 41-10 loss to Washington in the Pac-12 Championship game behind them as soon as possible.
It won't be easy. The Buffs played all season with a stated goal of winning a Pac-12 title. The devastation of coming up short was painfully evident on the faces of the players in the postgame postgame locker room at Levi's Stadium.
But with a 10-3 record and a bowl game in their future, these Buffs can still become only the fourth team in CU history to win 11 games and make Mike MacIntyre only the second coach in CU history to hit that number. All three previous 11-win teams — 1989 (11-1), 1990 (11-1-1) and 1994 (11-1) — were coached by Bill McCartney.
Equally important, the Buffs can finish what has already been a historic turnaround season on a strong note and send the program into the offseason with more momentum than it has enjoyed in years.
The Buffs will learn their bowl destination Sunday. The College Football Playoffs selection show begins at 10 a.m. on ESPN, with the semifinal pairings scheduled to be announced at approximately 10:30 a.m. The pairings for the remaining "New Year's Six" bowls — Rose, Sugar, Orange and Cotton — will be be announced at approximately 12:30 p.m., with the rest of the bowls then working to fill their spots with their contracted conferences.
Colorado's chances of the the program's first-ever Rose Bowl berth no doubt took a hit Friday, but the possibility still exists. Other possibilities are the Cotton, Alamo and Holiday bowls.
A number of factors will be in play.
One is whether 12-1 Washington is awarded a spot in the CFP semifinals. In the unlikely event the Huskies don't remain in the CFP's top four, Washington would automatically go to the Jan. 2 Rose Bowl as the conference champion and play a Big Ten team.
But if the Huskies do advance to the playoffs, the Rose will have the ability to choose between Colorado, which was No. 8 in last week's rankings, and USC, which was No. 11. Those rankings, however, are likely to change, particularly given the fact that both the Buffs and Trojans now have three losses and the Trojans own a win over Colorado this season.
If Colorado isn't selected by the Rose Bowl but does remain in the CFP's top 11, the Buffs could be a candidate for the Jan. 2 Cotton Bowl, where they would face Western Michigan.
Next on the list would be the Dec. 29 Alamo Bowl in San Antontio, where CU would likely see old Big Eight and Big 12 foe Oklahoma State. There also remains a possibility that the Buffs could slip to the Dec. 27 Holiday Bowl in San Diego.
But no matter where the Buffs end up, their goal will be the same: to finish the season with a win and send this year's seniors out on a high note. Many of the seniors are members of MacIntyre's first recruiting class, a group that will long be remembered as the group that turned the program back in the right direction.
Friday night, MacIntyre more than once mentioned the importance of winning the bowl game.
"We'll bounce back and go play in a bowl game, which is going to be fun for our guys, and send these seniors out the right way," MacIntyre said. "These seniors have unbelievable leadership. Three of our five captains are juniors, so we have a good future ahead of us, but I'm not concerned about that right now. I'm concerned about getting this team through the rest of the bowl season and sending them off the right way."
Friday night, CU's players were in no mood to speculate on their bowl future. But, said CU quarterback Sefo Liufau, "We're going to bounce back. We've always been a team that was able to overcome adversity, and it's just another one of those times. It just cuts a little deeper this time."
IN THE BOOKS: Colorado does not include bowl statistics in final season statistics or career statistics. Thus, Friday night's game was the finale for CU's seniors in terms of how they'll be recorded in Colorado's record books.
Liufau will finish with 9,568 passing yards and 10,509 yards total offense, two of the 87-plus CU records he either owns or shares. He also finished with 60 career touchdown passes, tying him for the CU career mark.
CU running back Phillip Lindsay, meanwhile, established a CU single-season record for receptions by a running back, finishing with 47, breaking the old mark of 45 set by Rodney Stewart in 2011. His 102 points scored (17 touchdowns) tied for the sixth most for a single season in CU history, and the most since Chris Brown scored 108 points in 2002. With one more season to go, Lindsay is now 13th on CU's all-time rushing charts (2,233 yards) and his 3,953 all-purpose yards are third most in Buff history.
CU junior Devin Ross finished as CU's receptions leader for the season, hauling in 66 catches for 765 yards and five touchdowns.
BOWL HISTORY: The Buffs are 12-16 in all-time bowl appearances, with losses in their last two appearances (2007 Independence vs. Alabama and 2005 Champs Sports vs. Clemson).
CU's last bowl win came in 2004, when Gary Barnett's team beat UTEP, 33-28, in the Houston Bowl.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
