College football's bowl season begins on Saturday with the New Mexico Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Here are predictions on the first 14 bowl games. 

With the 2012 college football regular season in the books, it’s time to take a look at the year in review. Several freshmen made an impact in the national and conference title races, including Heisman winner Johnny Manziel. The redshirt freshman wasn’t the only quarterback making a splash in their first season, as Oregon’s Marcus Mariota and UCLA’s Brett Hundley each averaged over 250 yards of total offense.

With all of the BCS conferences finished with regular season play, it's time to take a look at the 2012 college football season and hand out some hardware. At the midpoint of 2012, all signs pointed to West Virginia's Geno Smith as the runaway Heisman favorite, while Oregon and Alabama appeared to be on a collision course for the national championship. And what a difference a couple of weeks can make. The Ducks were bounced out of the top five by Stanford, while the Crimson Tide lost to Texas A&M, yet rebounded back into No. 2 in the BCS standings.

Which bowls should you tune into? Athlon ranks and previews all of the matchups from the must-see to the ones you can avoid. Although Alabama and Notre Dame is clearly the biggest bowl game, with 34 other contests, there are plenty of other quality pairings to watch this postseason.

Ranking the 35 Bowl Games: Must-Watch to Must-Miss

This is not a sentiment often noted with the BCS: Good thing the championship game is more than a month away.

Otherwise, good luck topping the game of the year in Atlanta. Every play and every decision was magnified in the SEC Championship Game. Every time a running back fought for an extra yard (and it happened a lot) a national championship seemed it was at stake.

Six conference championship games highlight the Week 14 slate, most notably the Georgia vs. Alabama clash in the SEC. There will also BCS bids on the line in the Big Ten (Nebraska vs. Wisconsin), ACC (Florida State vs. Georgia Tech) and Pac-12 (UCLA at Stanford), and possibly even in the MAC, where the winner of the Kent State vs. Northern Illinois battle could possibly end up in the Orange Bowl.

This week will mark the final chance for award contenders to make their final pitches to voters across the country.

Heisman contenders Johnny Manziel, Manti Te’o and Braxton Miller have finished their seasons, so Collin Klein will have the opportunity to make the final statement. And he’s not just vying for the Heisman.

College football's bowl season is inching closer, and it's never too early to take a look at what the matchups might look like. With 13 weeks of results in the books, the bowl picture for nearly every team is starting to clear. 

The post-Week 13 bowl projections are a mixture between how things would look if the season ended today, projection of Week 14, and considering the results so far this year. 

For all the complaints of losing the tradition of rivalry week, the Thanksgiving holiday was a turn back the clocks kind of weekend.

Notre Dame wrapped up a chance to play for its first national title since 1988. And elsewhere, Ohio State and Michigan re-energized their rivalry with a Woody and Bo-type matchup with Urban Meyer and Brady Hoke on the sidelines.

Week 12 of the 2012 college football season is in the books and plenty of coaches saw the temperature on their seat increase by a few degrees. And it was a busy week in the coaching carousel, as Tennessee's Derek Dooley and Western Michigan's Bill Cubit were fired after Saturday's games. UTEP's Mike Price also announced his retirement, which means there are five FBS open jobs going into Week 13.