Clemson Football: Tigers projected to play Oklahoma in CFB Playoff

CBS Sports Analyst Jerry Palm released his preseason 2019 bowl projections and he has Clemson football playing a familiar face in the CFB Playoff.

CBS Sports Analyst Jerry Palm released his preseason bowl projections that included Clemson football for the 2019 season.

Palm believes that the Tigers will enter the CFB Playoff as the No. 2 seed and will face the Oklahoma Sooners in the semifinal game in the Playstation Fiesta Bowl (Phoenix). The last time Clemson and Oklahoma faced off, the Tigers came away with an impressive victory to advance to the National Championship game. Clemson came up just short in the matchup with Alabama that season.

Interestingly enough, Palm also has predicted Alabama as the No. 1 seed facing Georgia as the No. 4 seed in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl (Atlanta, GA). That means, unless he has a weird finish in the SEC, that the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs would play a rematch of the SEC Championship game just three weeks after the conference title game in the same venue (Mercedes-Benz Stadium).

You want to talk about a strange, but interesting case scenario.

In my opinion, I don’t think the CFB Playoff committee would allow an Alabama-Georgia rematch in the semifinals. The only ways the two team would see each other in the playoff would be if they met in the National Championship or if one of them didn’t win their division, but still got into the playoff (see Alabama in 2017, for reference).

I don’t think that’s what Palm has happening, though.

If you’re a Clemson football fan, it’s clear that you’d like to see the Tigers get the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in the playoff rather than the Playstation Fiesta Bowl. It’d be a quick trip and certainly would be an advantage for the Tigers.

A few other bowl games of note: Palm has Miami vs. Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl; LSU vs. Texas in the Sugar Bowl; Ohio State vs. Washington in the Rose Bowl; and UCF vs. Michigan in the Cotton Bowl.