2021 Bowl Betting: College Football Playoff Picks for Cotton and Orange Bowls

We have picks for both college football playoff games, between Alabama vs. Cincinnati, and Michigan vs. Georgia.

December 29, 2021 - by Jason Lisk

The College Football Playoff semifinals will take place on Dec. 31. Here are our picks for both the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl.

Cotton Bowl: Alabama vs. Cincinnati

• When: December 31 at 3:30 p.m. ET
• Where: Arlington, Texas
• Spread: Alabama -13.5

The Pick: Cincinnati +13.5

Alabama is coming off a dominating performance in the SEC Championship Game that screamed “this is the Alabama that everyone expected.”

However, the week prior, it took some Auburn mental mistakes and a late comeback for the Crimson Tide to even have a chance to reach this game. That’s how close the margin is.

For most programs, a year like Alabama’s 2021 season would be the best of their decade. However, it’s fair to argue that this is the least dominant Alabama team of the last five years.

Consider this:

• Alabama reached the College Football Playoff this year by going 4-1 in games decided by one score.
• From 2017-2020, Alabama played six total one-score games excluding the playoffs, going 4-2 in such games.

By our predictive power ratings, Alabama is +8.9 points better than Cincinnati this year. But Alabama has the name recognition, big-game experience, and we just saw their “A” game, which accounts for the large spread.

However, it’s also possible that Cincinnati is better than what it has shown. The Bearcats have rarely been tested and didn’t need to put the throttle fully on against most of their opponents.

Cincinnati won at Notre Dame and at Indiana. Even in their two closest results of the year (Navy, Tulsa), the Bearcats had multiple-score leads entering the fourth quarter and surrendered late scores to make the final margin closer. They have not been in a game where they trailed late since last year’s Peach Bowl loss to Georgia.

There’s a lot of variance in these games between top non-power schools and big-name programs. None is truly comparable to this one, a national semifinal, which could impact motivations. But in the 10 games most similar to this one going back to 2003 (by spread, each team’s power rating, and strength of schedule), the underdogs like Cincinnati won outright half the time.

Our models don’t have a play on this one, but we’ll embrace the variance here getting this many points and take Cincinnati with the 13.5 number.

Orange Bowl: Georgia vs. Michigan

• When: December 31 at 7:30 p.m. ET
• Where: Miami, Florida
• Spread: Georgia -7.5

The Pick: Georgia -7.5

This one should be a defensive slugfest between the teams that are No. 1 and No. 2 in the nation in scoring defense. Georgia is easily on top at only 9.8 points per game, and that includes the 41 points it gave up to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

Likely based on how these teams played in their last game, the public is leaning more on Michigan, picking the Wolverines 54 percent of the time against the spread, according to our Bowl Pick’em Data. That may not seem notable, but the public tends to have a strong favorite bias, and it’s actually the fourth-most popular underdog pick against the spread among all of the bowl games.

The last impression must be part of that. Michigan had an impressive win over Ohio State and then sealed its place in the CFP with a dominant win over Iowa. Georgia looked like a team that knew it was in the playoff, and it got torched by Alabama’s offense.

This Michigan offense is not Alabama. This is a clash of two similar teams, and our predictive power ratings have Georgia as +8.0 points better, even including the conference championship game results. Georgia is still our top-rated team in the power ratings, and in a battle of “like on like,” we’ll take the higher-rated team.

Our Ensemble Forecast and Decision Tree betting models have this rated as a playable pick on Georgia, so we’ll lay the points in the second semifinal.

Other Betting Picks and Analysis

To view our model predictions and picks for all sports and all games, see our subscription page.

We also have a free one-year subscription offer from BetMGM available in select betting-legal U.S. states, though some restrictions apply.

And if you want more pick analysis, check out our BetIQ Daily articles, which are published at least four times per week. We’ll have picks on other bowl games this weekend and the NFL Week 17 games.