Against the advice of his closest friends, family, advisors, etc., Alan Cole is defending his Staff Pick 'em World Title this bowl season. As the only Gamecock site that actually kept score and picked against the spread our championship is THE Championship.

This season there are a ridiculous 43 bowl/playoff games. Bowl games are likely headed the way of print newspaper and Myspace in the coming years as the playoff expands, the transfer portal swells, and players are asked to play exhibitions without getting a piece of the pie, but as long as they are still around we are going to pick them and keep our readers up to date with a viewing guide.

We will update our scores each week. We will consider a "bowl week" games played beginning on a Tuesday and ending the following Monday. These ten games are being played from Friday through Monday, we are not going to give you our thoughts on all of them, just the games featuring SEC teams, the NY6, Playoff games, or other local teams. We will update the chart below each week. We are using confidence points for each of the 43 games. We will not pick the bowls against the spread.

For a short while in October and earlier November, this was a possible destination for the Gamecocks. After the debacle on Gainesville, it certainly appeared more likely Carolina would be in the desert. By our count, the Gators have had 17 players enter the transfer portal or be dismissed from the team since mid-October, including TE Nick Elksnis, why do we bring up the little-used Elksnis, stayed tuned to Gamecock Scoop in the coming days. The Gators also have four players that have announced they will be sitting out the bowl while they prepare for the NFL Draft, including QB Anthony Richardson, WR Justin Shorter, and OL O'Cyrus Torrence.

Oregon State has far, far less attrition. They will be down corner Rejzohn Wright due to injury, but does Florida have anyone that can throw a forward pass? Also watch for former Gamecock Deshaun Fenwick who has had a solid season for the Beavers.