We’ll put any pertinent bowl updates involving Tennessee and/or the SEC in this post as the afternoon unfolds.
Three SEC teams found out their destinations earlier Sunday afternoon. To nobody’s surprise, Alabama was named the top seed in the inaugural College Football Playoffs and will play Ohio State in the semifinals. Mississippi State is heading to the Orange Bowl to play Georgia Tech and Ole Miss will play TCU in the Peach Bowl.
It’s good news for the rest of the SEC that two teams got into the major bowls, that leaves less potential teams to fill up the rest of the SEC bowl tie-ins. It also means all 12 bowl eligible teams in the SEC will fit perfectly into the SEC bowl tie-ins. Three are already in and there are nine (Citrus, Texas, Belk, Music City, Liberty, Outback, Taxslayer, Birmingham and Independence) bowls left for the nine eligible teams.
Now we wait for the SEC to start making some announcements.
There have been some reports of the Vols ending up in the Music City Bowl against perhaps Louisville. We can’t rule that out, though we have had a source tell us that Tennessee wasn’t too high on the MCB’s preference list,which doesn’t rule the Vols out since it’s ultimately the SEC’s call, but does make us a little skeptical of that at this point.
*Updated: Tennessee has officially accepted a bid to play in the TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida on January 2nd against Iowa.*
We’ll fill in bowl matchups as they roll in:
Independence: Miami vs. South Carolina (Shreveport, Louisiana on Saturday, December 27th. 3:30pm)
Texas: Arkansas vs. Texas (Houston, Texas on Monday, December 29th. 9:00pm)
Liberty: West Virginia vs. Texas A&M (Memphis, Tennessee on Monday, December 29th. 9:00pm)
Music City: LSU vs. Notre Dame (Nashville, Tennessee on Tuesday, December 30th. 3:00pm)
Belk: Georgia vs. Louisville (Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday, December 30th. 6:30pm)
Citrus: Missouri vs. Minnesota (Orlando, Florida on Thursday, January 1st. 1:00pm)
Outback: Auburn vs. Wisconsin (Tampa, Florida on Thursday, January 1st. 12:00pm)
Taxslayer: Iowa vs. Tennessee (Jacksonville, Florida on Friday, January 2nd. 3:20pm)
Birmingham: Florida vs. East Carolina (Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday, January 3rd. 1:00pm)