{"id":79686,"date":"2025-12-07T22:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T22:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79686\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T22:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T22:02:08","slug":"byu-misses-college-football-playoff-accepts-invite-to-pop-tarts-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79686\/","title":{"rendered":"BYU Misses College Football Playoff, Accepts Invite to Pop Tarts Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5u\">On Sunday, the College Football Playoff committee selected the 12 teams for the College Football Playoff and BYU missed the cut.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5x\">On the same day, BYU was selected for the Pop Tarts Bowl bowl against Georgia Tech, according to a report from Brett McMurphy. The Pop Tarts Bowl will kickoff at 3:30 PM ET on Saturday, December 27th. BYU was one of the first two teams left out of the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"60\">The headline of this game is not who BYU is going to play. Rather, it&#8217;s who they are not going to play. Reports surfaced that BYU was going to face Notre Dame if the Fighting Irish weren&#8217;t selected for the College Football Playoff. When Notre Dame found out they were not selected for the playoff, they opted not to play in a bowl game. The Pop Tarts Bowl was forced to pick a different matchup, and that&#8217;s how they landed on BYU-Georgia Tech.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"63\">While the Pop Tarts bowl is one of the better bowl destinations in college football, it&#8217;s a disappointing conclusion to what probably should have been a college football playoff berth. The Cougars were the first P4 team to finish 11-1 and be ranked outside the top 10.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"66\">Like BYU, Georgia Tech started out 8-0. Then the Yellow Jackets stumbled in November, going 1-3 and falling to 9-3.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"69\">Despite having a strength of record and a resume worthy of the playoff, the committee couldn&#8217;t look past BYU&#8217;s blowout losses to a top four team in Texas Tech. BYU had a better strength of record than both Miami and Alabama, yet those two teams received at-large bids over BYU.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6c\">Regardless, BYU made incremental improvements in 2025. They made the conference championship game after narrowly missing the game last year. They also did it with a true freshman quarterback in Bear Bachmeier that didn&#8217;t the join the program until June. The problem is they had to play a national championship contender in Texas Tech twice. BYU, frankly, is not ready to compete at that level quite yet.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6f\">The most important storyline of the offseason for BYU will be to improve the roster. Part of Kalani Sitake&#8217;s contract extension included more money for NIL. With those additional funds, BYU should have the opportunity to improve at key positions.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6i\">x<\/p>\n<p>More BYU Football Coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sunday, the College Football Playoff committee selected the 12 teams for the College Football Playoff and BYU&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":{"0":"post-79686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}