The Sporting News predicted every bowl game for the end of the 2018 season and the UCLA football team has been projected to return to the Hyundai Sun Bowl.
With the 2018 season still over two months away, college football fans have nothing to do but wait it out and dive deep into every article that makes a prediction about the upcoming season. The same goes for UCLA football fans.
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Above all else, in regards to UCLA, the biggest question is: how is Chip Kelly going to do in his first season with UCLA? Many believe that he will flounder in his first year due to a mix of a treacherous schedule and a team in transition from the Jim Mora era. Others believe they will win plenty simply because the Bruins have Kelly, which could result in a successful Year 1.
Honestly, nobody knows. But it is fun to guess.
The Sporting News continued with that guessing game as they released their predictions for every bowl and playoff game for 2018-19. Obviously, we will not know exactly what post-season contest UCLA will go to (or if they even qualify for one) until the end of the regular season, but analyzing what the Bruins will endure in 2018, The Sporting News came to the conclusion that UCLA will in fact become bowl eligible and make it back to the Hyundai Sun Bowl (El Paso, TX) and could face Georgia Tech.
For those of you not familiar with the Pac-12’s bowl connections, the Sun Bowl is the fourth best bowl a team can be placed in (not counting teams getting bumped up to a New Years’ Six Bowl or the College Football Playoffs). So is The Sporting News saying UCLA could be one of the top four teams in the conference? It is possible, but they also projected the Bruins to win only 5.5 games in 2018, just barely making them bowl eligible.
If UCLA was to make it to the Sun Bowl, they would most likely need a 7 or 8 win season. Doable, but tough to do when you have one of the hardest schedules in the nation.
Next: UCLA Football: 10 bold predictions for the 2018 season
The other Pac-12 bowl projections are as follows: Boise State vs. Washington State (Camellia Bowl), Iowa State vs. Utah (Cactus Bowl), Nebraska vs. Arizona (Foster Farms Bowl), Northwestern vs. USC (Holiday Bowl), Texas vs. Oregon (Alamo Bowl), UCF vs. Stanford (Fiesta Bowl) and Wisconsin vs. Washington (Rose Bowl).