Bleh. Bunch of no-win scenarios there. Beat a Penn State team that’s in a spiral? Meh. Lose to them? Please let’s not. I guess Minnesota is ranked, so we could say we beat a ranked (at the time) team, but also they lost to Bowling Green. They’re Kentucky—tougher than you’d like but you don’t really get anything for beating them.
Mandel now has A&M in Nashville and us in Jacksonville against Clemson. That’s a low-risk/high-reward matchup to me, although I don’t see many other people projecting it.
If it's Nashville, we're getting absolutely [uck fay]ed. There are only three SEC teams logically ahead of us in the regular bowl pecking order and the MCB is like 5th in the order. Kentucky being a dogshit 9-3 team might [uck fay] us over. if they had beaten anybody worth a damn, they'd be in the NY6
5th in the regular bowl pecking order? Citrus, Outback, and Gator are ahead of it, but I can’t think of a clear 4th. And I feel like Kentucky, Arkansas, A&M, and Mississippi State can at least argue for being ahead of us, although Kentucky (in bowl order, not quality) and Arkansas are the only ones that are especially clear.
Also, pretty sure the Texas Bowl pays more than the MCB, and the Liberty Bowl has more history, plus a better conference tie in