It’s rare for teams from the same conference to face off in a bowl game, but the matchup between the No. 17 BYU Cougars (10-2) and the No. 23 ranked Colorado Buffaloes (9-3) in the Valero Alamo Bowl can be blamed on conference realignment.
Both BYU and Colorado could have made the Big 12 Championship game. The Cougars were undefeated before falling to Kansas and Arizona State in back-to-back weeks. Winning either one of those games would have landed BYU in the championship game.
Colorado missed out on the game thanks to tiebreakers when the Cougars beat Houston to end the regular season. Had BYU fallen in that finale, the Buffaloes would have replaced Iowa State in the Big 12 Championship game, challenging Arizona State for the title.
The bragging rights for this game extend beyond winning a college bowl game. Will Colorado or BYU lay claim to being the third-best team in the Big 12 this season with a victory? We’ll discuss that and our three favorite player prop bets in this article.
Colorado junior wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter has done it all. To win the Heisman this year, the 6-foot-1 dual-way athlete caught 92 passes for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns. He’s also made 31 tackles, 11 pass deflections, four interceptions, and forced a fumble on defense.
To finish out his collegiate career, he’ll go against a Cougars defense that has been great at guarding the pass this season. Five of the last six teams BYU has faced have finished with less than 200 yards passing.
Still, teams have had success this season throwing the football against BYU. Baylor and Arizona State both finished with one receiver recording 120-plus receiving yards against the Cougars. Hunter will become the third such player to hit this mark, covering this player prop bet.
If not for his Heisman-winning teammate, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders might have been in the conversation for the season’s best player. In his second year with the Buffaloes, Sanders completed 74.2 percent of his passes for 3,926 yards, 35 touchdowns, and eight interceptions in 2024.
Only Baylor was able to throw for more than 300 yards against the Cougars this season, but Arizona and Arizona State both had a running game to speak of. Sanders does not. Expect the quarterback to finish shy of the 320-yard mark on Saturday.
BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff has had a strong junior season for the Cougars. The 6-foot-1 signal-caller has completed 57.9 percent of his passes for 2,796 yards, 20 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions. He’s also been able to make moves with his feet. Retzlaff has rushed 93 times for 388 yards and six touchdowns this season, making him his team’s second-leading rusher.
He’ll need to be mobile against Colorado’s pass rush, giving him ample opportunities to surpass this player prop bet. In seven of his 12 contests this season, he’s exceeded this 27.5-yard mark on the ground, and he’s barely missed it one other time.
Unlike most bowl games, neither Colorado nor BYU have meaningful portal defections to discuss. With two high-powered offenses squaring off, the 55-point total between these two teams is a no-brainer.
In terms of winning the contest, Colorado is favored by 3.5 points. Picking a winner in this game is a toss-up, more so than in other bowl games this season. The Buffaloes should take the victory, but I’m more confident these teams will score in bunches against each other than taking Colorado – or BYU, for that matter – to win by more than a field goal.
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