Inside The Huskies

Experts Like Huskies Facing ACC Opponent in Sun Bowl

The UW previously has played four times in El Paso in the postseason.

Dan Raley

The Sun Bowl could be the UW football team's postseason destination.
The Sun Bowl could be the UW football team's postseason destination. / GABY VELASQUEZ/ EL PASO TIMES / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

For the past two years, the University of Washington football team has played its final game of the season in Texas -- and a lot of people think that geographical connection will hold true when the latest bowl game match-ups are revealed on Sunday.

More experts projecting the postseason than not have the Huskies (6-6) turning up in the 91st Sun Bowl on New Year's Eve against any a number of possible ACC opponents such as Louisville (8-4), Duke (9-3), Georgia Tech (7-5) or Boston College (7-5) -- all first-time match-ups for the UW with the exception of Duke.

Sun Bowl kickoff on Tuesday, Dec. 31, is set for 11 a.m. with CBS televising the action. All bowl games will be revealed on Sunday, beginning at 2 p.m., with UW coach Jedd Fisch holding a new news conference in a Husky team room at that time.

If this indeed is its bowl destination, the UW in 24 months will go from San Antonio to Houston to El Paso to conclude things. Kalen DeBoer took the Huskies to the 2022 Alamo Bowl for a 27-20 victory over Texas and to last January's CFP national championship game for a 34-13 defeat at the hands of Michigan.

The state of Texas has been a recent postseason destination for the current UW coach, too. A year ago, Fisch's Arizona team ended up in the Alamo Bowl and beat Oklahoma 38-24.

The local El Paso Times newspaper -- which is as good of an authority on this game as anyone -- predicts the UW and Duke will meet in the coming Sun Bowl. These teams haven't played in more than 50 years since the Sonny Sixkiller-led Huskies beat the Blue Devils 14-6 in Seattle in 1972 and the UW lost to Duke 23-21 in Durham, North Carolina, the following year, in their only two games as opponents.

ESPN's Kyle Bonagura has a UW-Louisville match-up in the Sun Bowl while ESPN colleague Mark Schlabach predicts the Huskies will meet Virginia Tech.

Brett McMurphy of Action Network has paired Georgia Tech and Washington in this game, same as College Football News and Athlon.

USA Today envisions a Syracuse-Washington in El Paso.

The Huskies have played in the Sun Bowl four times, but not in more than two decades.

In El Paso, the UW edged Texas 14-7 in the first outing in 1979 and have since lost to Alabama 28-6 in 1986, to Iowa 38-18 in 1995 and to Purdue 34-24 in 2002.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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