Where will Louisiana schools go bowling? We’ll know Sunday

Five Louisiana colleges play football at the Bowl Subdivision level. For the first time ever, all five are bowl eligible in the same season.

Though some bowl decisions will trickle out between now and Saturday’s conference championship games, most spots will not be awarded until Sunday, once the College Football Playoff committee has its final rankings and slotted the four playoff teams and the eight teams going to the other New Year’s Six bowls.

There was good news and bad news for LSU when the penultimate CFP rankings came out Tuesday night.

The bad news was that the Tigers (9-3) were ranked behind Florida, which effectively eliminates them from the possibility of staying nearby and playing in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. The good news was that LSU dropped only three spots to No. 10 in the rankings, so barring some crazy results on Saturday, Ed Orgeron’s team is likely headed to either the Peach or Fiesta Bowl.

Saturday’s American Athletic Conference championship between undefeated UCF – ranked No. 8 in the latest CFP rankings – and Memphis could play a part in Tulane’s bowl destination.

A UCF victory almost assuredly puts the Knights in either the Peach or Fiesta – possibly against LSU – but a loss likely sends the Mountain West champion, either Boise State or Fresno State, into that slot.

The three most likely destinations for Tulane (6-6) are the Cure Bowl Dec. 15 in Orlando, the Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl Dec. 18 in Boca Raton, Florida, and the Frisco Bowl Dec. 19 in Frisco, Texas.

If the Cure Bowl is the choice, it could be an all-Louisiana matchup in Orlando as the opponent would be the loser of Saturday’s inaugural Sun Belt Conference championship game between UL Lafayette (7-5) and Appalachian State. The homestanding Mountaineers are more than a two-touchdown favorite.

Coincidentally, the Green Wave and Ragin’ Cajuns just played a neutral-site basketball game in the Sunshine State last week, with the Cajuns winning 68-61 in the third-place game of the Gulf Coast Showcase in Estero, Florida.

The winner of the Sun Belt title game heads to the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl on the evening of Dec. 15 in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome against a team from Conference USA, which has Middle Tennessee and UAB meeting for its league title on Saturday.

The two FBS schools from north Louisiana are in different situations. Louisiana Tech (7-5), assured of a spot as Conference USA has six guaranteed bowl berths and six teams with at least seven wins, has accepted an invitation to the Hawai’i Bowl to face the hometown Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors on Dec. 22.

UL Monroe (6-6), on the other hand, may be caught in a numbers game. The Sun Belt has five primary bowl slots and the league has five schools with seven or more wins.

There will be either three or four bowl-eligible schools left out of the bowl mix, depending on the results of Saturday’s Virginia Tech-Marshall game, which could make the Hokies the 82nd bowl-eligible team for 78 total slots.

ULM and Southern Miss are two of five Group of 5 schools with six wins. Depending on whether Virginia Tech is eligible, it appears only one or two of those five will go bowling.

While our area schools wait for the bowl situation to sort itself out, so do the operations of the two local bowl games.

In a non-playoff semifinal year for the Sugar Bowl, it gets the highest-ranked SEC and Big 12 teams not in the College Football Playoff. It’s likely down to five teams – Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas.

Not only will the result of those two conference championships come into play, but style points may matter as well. For instance, would an Alabama blowout of Georgia drop the Bulldogs behind Florida in the final rankings?

Even though the regular season is over for most, there’s still plenty of football on Saturday that will go a long way in sorting out the process.