Florida football: Why are we picking bowl games in August?

ESPN recently came out with two of its analysts’ predictions for college football bowl games. Yeah, it’s August and Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach are picking where Florida football will be in the off-season.

Maybe it’s the impending hurricane bearing down on South Florida. Perhaps it’s the lack of Florida football this weekend.

Or maybe I’m just feeling punchy for the sake of being punchy.

But, for the life of me, I can’t understand why the massive mothership at ESPN found it to be a good idea to list where they believed teams would be going for bowl games this season.

I don’t have to remind you that it’s August.

The first bowl game of the 2019 college football schedule isn’t until the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl on Dec. 20 (of which Bonagura has Eastern Michigan taking on Louisiana Tech while Schlabach has Western Michigan facing Alabama-Birmingham for those of you who really care).

That’s right. This week, the geniuses at ESPN looked for some click-bait and came up with a prediction of bowl games.

First, let me tell you that, as a writer, I have a lot of respect for both Bonagura and Schlabach.

However, I am just not understanding why now was a good time to put their names on a piece such as one predicting how the college football bowl extravaganza would play out.

Florida Gators Football

Especially when such a small amount of college football games have been played thus far.

Interestingly enough, both Bonagura and Schlabach have Florida football playing in the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1. The difference is who they will be playing.

Bonagura has Florida football taking on Penn State while Schlabach has the Gators and Virginia playing each other at Camping World Stadium in Orlando — in case you forgot, that is where the No. 8 Gators beat Miami 24-20 last weekend.

Now, in case you were wondering the Citrus Bowl is a contracted SEC bowl game. It is the bowl game that gets the first selection after the College Football Playoffs selection is complete.

So, you can have an SEC team in the semifinals — which would likely be the winner of the SEC title game. Then you have the Sugar Bowl where an SEC team is pitted against a team from the Big 12, only when the Sugar Bowl is not a semifinal game.

There is also the potential for an SEC team to be picked into the Peach Bowl or Fiesta Bowl as the CFP Selection Committee decides that as well.

Then, the Citrus Bowl has the first pick after all the CFP selections are done.

Basically, what this means is both Bonagura and Schlabach believe Florida football will be the third- or fourth-best team out of the SEC, which is about where pundits have them.

But, it still doesn’t change the fact that we’re looking at bowl picks in August, even before the first full week of games.

I swear, what some media organizations will do for clicks.

What do you think about bowl game picks in August? Let us know in the comments or on social media, Follow us on Twitter @hailfloridahail.