Nov 10, 2008 20:09
After their 5-0 start, the Commodores fell to 5-4 with their loss to Florida on Saturday. Before the game, Vanderbilt still had a chance to make a BCS bowl as they could have won the SEC East had they won out and Georgia had lost another SEC game. However, with the loss Florida clinched the SEC East, but Vanderbilt can still finish 8-4 and make the Outback Bowl or Chick-fil-A bowl. However, even if Vandy finished 8-4 and Kentucky finished 7-5, it's likely those bowls would still pick Kentucky over Vanderbilt since we don't have a proven fan base.
More realistically, Vandy should still make a bowl if they win any of their remaining three games. The most likely way it doesn't happen is Auburn beats Alabama, Arkansas beats Mississippi State, and Alabama wins the SEC Championship. That would result in 10 bowl eligible teams with SEC tie-ins to 9 bowls. Of course, some other conferences might not end up with enough bowl eligible teams and could pick Vanderbilt to fill that slot.
As for the teams that will make the BCS games, everyone is presuming that the SEC Champion will play the Big 12 Champion for the National Championship. But there are a number of odd things that could happen.
1) Alabama or Florida loses a game before the SEC Championship game, but still wins the title game.
2) The Big 12 South champion loses the Big 12 title game.
3) Oregon State wins the Pac-10
4) Michigan State wins the Big 10
The first opens the door for either an all-Big 12 game or USC to reach the NCG.
The second could be more interesting. You could have Texas at 11-1 and Texas Tech at 12-1 or Oklahoma at 11-2 with UT and Tech both at 11-1 with neither having won the Big 12. Could Utah move all the way up into the NCG?
The third doesn't affect the NCG, but would make USC an at-large team pushing out a second team from the Big 10 and preventing a second non-BCS team from making it in. The fourth knocks out Ohio State and Penn State
If the season ended today, you'd have the following teams in the BCS:
Automatic qualifiers
1 Alabama
2 Texas Tech
3 Texas
7 Utah
15 Michigan State
19 Florida State (or other ACC team)
21 Pittsburgh
NR Oregon State
eligible at-large teams (2 spots to fill)
4 Florida or 10 Georgia
6 USC
8 Penn State or 11 Ohio State
12 TCU
14 Ball State
And those choices likely put Florida in the Sugar Bowl and USC in the Fiesta Bowl against Texas.
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