Mobile version. Acronyms are explained below. All times Eastern and PM, except where obvious. As of 01/13/2015 02:26:15 AM -0800.

Teams 6-6 or better that need at-large bids: Texas State (7-5), Temple (6-6), Middle Tennessee State (6-6), Alabama-Birmingham (6-6), Ohio (6-6).

Overall: 23-16 (58.97%)
Scores: 1-38 (2.6%)

Old predictions
Past years: 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | Index

There are many changes for 2014, so you may want to re-read this part.

The College Football Playoff is a new system that includes a rotating set of six bowl games (the Chick-fil-A, Cotton, Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange) plus a championship game. Each year, two of the games will host semi-final games, which will be seeded according to a committee. The winners of those games will meet in the championship game. The rotation of the games is as such for the semi-finals:
2014-2015: Rose and Sugar Bowls
2015-2016: Orange and Cotton Bowls
2016-2017: Fiesta and Chick-fil-a Bowls
This will continue through the 2025-2026 season.

When those games aren't hosting national semi-finals, they will be the home for conference champions and other teams not selected for the semi-finals. The default matchups are:
Rose: Big Ten #1 vs. Pac-12 #1
Sugar: SEC #1 vs. Big 12 #1
Orange: ACC #1 vs. SEC #2/Big Ten #2/Notre Dame
Cotton, Fiesta, and Chick-fil-a: At-large selections or the "top team" from the Group of Five (which consists of the non-autobid conferences (the American, C-USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt). These bowls can also host the Big Ten or SEC champions if they are not in the playoff when the Rose or Sugar bowls are part of the playoff.

Other rules:
1. Notre Dame can only appear twice as an at-large
2. If the ACC faces a rematch in the Orange Bowl, then the Orange can select the highest ranked available opponent (according to the committee) and the spurned team is placed elsewhere in the framework.

In another change for this year, since there are no limits on the number of teams from each conference in the CFP-affiliated bowls, I have changed the way the numbers you see next to each conference work. "ACC #1" now means "the first ACC team after the CFP selection process", not "the ACC champion".

Overall eligibility: The 2013-2014 NCAA Division I Manual (warning, PDF) bylaw 18.7.2 governs Division I-A football eligibility. The NCAA defines a "deserving team" as a team with an equal number of wins and losses, i.e, a record of 6-6 and better against FBS opponents. For the purposes of this record, a team is also allowed to count one FCS win as well. Note that it is no longer a requirement that all above .500 teams are selected before 6-6 teams. For 2013, the NCAA added what one might call the "UCLA and Georgia Tech" rule which basically boils down to: a) winning your conference title game makes you a "deserving team" and b) losing your title game does not affect your "deserving team" status.

In addition to deserving teams, bylaw 18.7.2 also spells out what will happen if there are not enough bowl eligible teams for the 38 bowl games. Note that these criteria apply in order, and a particular bowl game may use a team from this "pool" once every four years (effective 8/2012).
1. The "counting 1 FCS win" rule only applies if the FCS team in question uses 90% of available scholarships out of 63 (so 56.7 scholarships, as FCS allows partial scholarships), so the first criteria is that any FCS school counts for the 1-win.
2. Teams that finished 6-6 with two FCS wins. No school plays two FCS teams this year.
3. Teams that finished 6-7 (this used to be the "UCLA rule" but conference championships can no longer make a team ineligible for a bowl).
5. Teams that are reclassifying to FBS and have a 6-6 record. This year this includes Georgia Southern, Appalachian State, and Old Dominion.
6. Teams in the top 5 of the APR and with a 5-7 record. This year, those teams are Duke, Northwestern, Utah State, Boise State, and Stanford.
These provisions are in effect for the 2012 through 2015 seasons.

The ACC bowl selection criteria are buried in the massive media guide (warning: huge PDF) on page 17. The ACC no longer has a "one-win rule" and instead is using a more SEC-style "general list of criteria to emphasize regionality and quality matchups". Notre Dame is eligible for all the ACC's bowls, but must be within one win of the best available ACC team at the time.
The Big Ten bowl lineup. This article from last year purports that the Big Ten has "tiers", but I can't find any evidence of this in official Big Ten media. Perhaps this will become clearer later.
The Capital One Bowl will pick an ACC team if the ACC faces a Big Ten team in the Orange Bowl.
The Pac-12 bowl selection order, on page 133.
The SEC bowl selection order on page 34.
The American bowl lineup. Teams will be placed "based on best fit for the Conference and its membership".
The Mountain West media guide has their bowl games on page 32. There is no particular order, though the Las Vegas bowl claims they have the first pick (and this has usually been the case in the past).
The MAC media guide lists its bowl tie-ins on page 10. This article also talks about them a bit.
The Big 12 doesn't really list the selection order on their website. Information is derived from individual bowl websites.
The Sun Belt media guide lists them as having three tie-ins this year on page 15.
The C-USA bowl selection process. Apparently the C-USA champion will get its pick of the C-USA's tie-ins.

Other notes:

• The Citrus Bowl must select an ACC team if the ACC's opponent in the Orange Bowl is from the Big Ten. This can happen up to three times in six years.
• The Music City and TaxSlayer Bowls are splitting ACC and Big Ten teams. Each bowl will get three teams from both conferences over the current set of six-year contracts.

?=at-large because some conference couldn't fill its bids
* = Accepted invitation
** = Predicted correctly
A team in bold indicates that I predicted the winner correctly
A team in italics means that team won the game, but was not who I picked
A bold score means that I actually managed to pick the score correctly|
A team that is underlined is the predicted winner

Schedule sources: CollegeFootballPoll, Matt Sarz, conference media guides (see above), and individual bowl websites.