All the pieces of the puzzle are coming together.
Following No. 1 Auburn’s win against No. 16 Alabama on Friday and No. 10 LSU’s loss to No. 7 Arkansas, the bowl picture for the Southeastern Conference has possibly cleared up.
Should the rankings hold and should Auburn win the SEC Championship Game, it would secure a spot in the national championship game.
Arkansas would be the top candidate to receive an at-large bid to the Sugar Bowl. LSU, Alabama and South Carolina would then be left in limbo between the Capital One, Outback and Cotton bowls.
But no matter where the Tigers play their postseason ball, some students are unimpressed.
“They’re in a bowl, and that’s fine,” said microbiology freshman Andrew Barker. “It would’ve been better if they would have won and played in the Sugar Bowl, but I guess the Cotton Bowl is fine.”
But should the top-ranked Auburn Tigers fall in Atlanta this weekend, the picture becomes more complicated.
South Carolina would then be guaranteed the SEC’s automatic BCS berth, and the bowl committees of the remaining BCS bowls would have to decide if they wanted to take Auburn as an at-large team. If they do, Arkansas would then be bumped out of the BCS picture and left to fight with LSU and Alabama for one of the remaining three New Year’s Day bowl bids.
ESPN college football analyst Mark Schlabach has released his bowl predictions — which assume Auburn wins the SEC crown — and has LSU facing off against Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl.
This would mark the second-consecutive time LSU would play in the Capital One Bowl and the second time LSU has faced Michigan State in a bowl game. The two teams last met in the 1995 Independence Bowl when the Spartans were led by Nick Saban.
LSU’s loss Saturday hit home for Barker.
“It was completely disappointing, considering how highly we were ranked,” Barker said. “Arkansas is always a pretty good team and always a hard team and a scary game for us, but we didn’t quite play up to our potential on Saturday.”
Others take Saturday’s loss as an indictment of the entire season.
“It’s a disappointment from what we could have done, but it’s a bowl game,” said general studies freshman William Fisk. “I expected this team to be maybe top-25, but especially after the Tennessee game, I didn’t expect much out of this team.”
Though LSU’s season may not have ended how the fans wished in August, conference pride is still ringing strong in pulling for the conference to win its fifth-consecutive national title.
“If Auburn loses, it’s going to be Oregon and TCU in the national championship, and every conference besides the SEC is total garbage,” Fisk said. “If you look at the past four national champions it was Alabama, Florida, LSU and then Florida, so I always pull for an SEC team.”
Even though Auburn quarterback Cam Newton is still under the gun from NCAA and FBI investigators attempting to find out if he or his father, Cecil, solicited and received improper benefits from Auburn during his recruitment, Barker does not think it should hinder the Tigers’ chances of playing for college football’s top prize.
“This scandal has been pushed around for a while now, but eventually it is going to get resolved,” Barker said. “I just don’t think it’s going to get done in time to do anything for this season.” Blog: Boise’s bus breaks down, to no surprise Read: Schwehmming Around: Tigers got all the wrong bounces during Arkansas game
 
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Contact Rob Landry at [email protected]