Bowl season winners and losers: USC starts and ends its 2024 with wins over SEC teams in Vegas

Bowl season is in full swing as New Year’s Day approaches. With Saturday’s bowl slate the busiest of the year, we figured it was a great time to take a look at the winners and losers of the postseason so far.

Winners

USC: The Trojans bookended an otherwise disappointing season with wins over SEC teams in Las Vegas. USC beat LSU in Week 1 to start the season at Allegiant Stadium and ended it Friday night with a 35-31 win over Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl. QB Jayden Maiava threw three interceptions but hit Kyle Ford with eight seconds left for the game-winning score after Marcel Reed gave Texas A&M a three-point lead with 1:49 to go. The victory means USC finishes the season at 7-6 and avoids the first losing season in Lincoln Riley’s career as a head coach. However, 7-6 is not what Riley was brought to Los Angeles for. He’s got a tall rebuilding task ahead of him with USC’s performance in 2024 and the team’s departures via the transfer portal.

Vanderbilt: The team that was widely expected to finish last in the SEC instead ended up with a winning record. The Commodores beat Georgia Tech 35-27 in the Birmingham Bowl on Friday thanks to 21 straight points in the second half. QB Diego Pavia threw three touchdowns as he’s set to come back for another season thanks to his victory in court. Pavia successfully sued to have another year of eligibility after playing in junior college and plans to return to Nashville with assistant coach Jerry Kill and tight end Eli Stowers. Stowers, who played with Pavia under Kill at New Mexico State in 2023, had 49 catches for 638 yards and five TDs in 2024 and caught four passes for 55 yards and a TD in the bowl game.

Navy: The Midshipmen stopped Oklahoma on a two-point conversion with six seconds left to beat the Sooners 21-20 in the Armed Forces Bowl. The win put Navy at 10-3 and gives the Midshipmen their first 10-win season since an 11-2 campaign in 2019. Though Army won the AAC, Navy can claim service academy bragging rights with its 31-13 victory over the Black Knights and a 34-7 win over Air Force.

Syracuse QB Kyle McCord: Who could have guessed before the season started that Kyle McCord would set the ACC record for passing yards in 2024? The former Ohio State QB finished the season with 4,779 yards after throwing for 453 yards and five touchdowns in the Orange’s 52-35 Holiday Bowl win over Washington State. McCord was 391-of-592 passing for 34 TDs and 12 interceptions this season and five of those picks came in his nightmarish game against Pitt in October. McCord will finish the season with the most completions, pass attempts and yards of any QB this season after he threw for 3,170 over 12 games in his only season as the Buckeyes’ starter in 2023.

UConn: The Huskies took down North Carolina 27-14 in the Fenway Bowl on Saturday to finish the season 9-4. It’s a remarkable season for one of the few independent teams in college football. The nine wins ties a program record and only three UConn teams have finished a season with that many victories. The success also comes as UConn hasn’t had a winning season since 2010 when Randy Edsall was in the last season of his first stint with the team.

Losers

Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi: Do you think it’s easier to score a TD from a yard away or three yards away? Narduzzi chose the latter option in his team’s 48-46 six-overtime loss to Toledo in the GameAbove Sports Bowl. In case you need a refresher, college football’s overtime rules mean that any game that goes past two overtimes turns into a battle of dueling two-point conversions from the 3 yard-line. After Toledo kicked a 33-yard field goal to open the second overtime, Pitt got to the 1 yard-line and Gavin Bartholomew was stopped for no gain on third down. Instead of going for the win from a yard out, Narduzzi had Ben Sauls kick a 19-yard field goal for the tie and a third overtime. Four overtimes later, Pitt had its sixth straight loss to end the season at 7-6.

Tennessee: Whew, it was a bad, bad night for the Volunteers on Dec. 21. Tennessee found itself quickly down 21-0 at Ohio State in its 42-17 College Football Playoff loss to the Buckeyes. The Ohio State defense overwhelmed Tennessee’s offense and the Vols’ biggest offensive threat was QB Nico Iamaleava’s legs after star RB Dylan Sampson suffered a lower-body injury. Tennessee needs to figure out the offensive inconsistency that plagued it over the second-half of the season if it wants to get back to the CFP again in 2025.

Oklahoma: The Sooners ended their first season in the SEC with the school’s second losing season in three years under Brent Venables. Oklahoma hadn’t posted a losing season since a third-straight in 1998 under John Blake. The offense was the issue in 2024 and the Sooners hope that will be fixed with the arrival of Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and quarterback John Mateer. The schedule is still difficult, however. OU will play at Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama next season and still have Ole Miss, Missouri and LSU as well.

Tulane: It’s been a brutal end to the season for the Green Wave. Tulane lost the chance to host the AAC title game and potentially make the College Football Playoff with a Thanksigiving night loss at home to Memphis. Then the Green Wave got blown out at Army to lose the conference title game. After that, starting QB Darian Mensah transferred to Duke. Then Tulane lost 33-8 to Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl. And now RB Makhi Hughes is in the transfer portal. He had 1,401 yards and 15 rushing TDs this season.

North Carolina: Bill Belichick has some work to do. The Tar Heels ended the seaosn at 6-7 and on a three-game losing streak with their loss to UConn. Yes, UNC was without star RB Omarion Hampton, but the Tar Heels had just 206 total yards and were 0-of-9 on third down. North Carolina’s only offensive TD of the game came with less than seven minutes to go when UConn was up by 20.