Other than us losing to Arkansas, pretty much everything went right for LSU to improve its bowl position.  Kentucky lost to Tennessee, keeping them at 6-6.  Vandy lost to Wake Forest, keeping them at 6-6 as well.  Then South Carolina lost to Clemson, keeping South Carolina at 7 wins, matching us.

The rules are, no bowl can invite a 6-6 team unless there are no 7-win teams with the appropriate tie-in available.  That means we are at worst the 6th SEC team in the bowl race.  We figure right now that Alabama and Florida are locks for the BCS regardless of what happens, unless the BCS for whatever reason cannot take two SEC teams.  I haven't looked at the math for that, but I'm assuming for now that the SEC will get two BCS slots, including a guaranteed slot in the BCSNCG.

After that, Georgia is the #3 team and is likely headed to the Cap One, despite its loss to Georgia Tech yesterday.  Ole Miss is the #4 team in the conference.  Yes, you heard that right.  Ole Miss is the #4 team in the conference.  I would just like to say that I called Ole Miss being pretty solid at the beginning of the year.  Don't read that whole article though, because I said some pretty embarrassingly wrong things.

After Ole Miss, we have LSU and South Carolina sitting at 7-5 each, with each one hoping to get the Outback Bowl slot.  The Outback tends to go with an Eastern Division team, and frankly South Carolina finished the season stronger than we did, so I'm not holding my breath on the Outback picking us ahead of the Gamecocks, even though we beat them head to head.

That leaves the Peach Bowl for the next team, which is us.  No one else can sneak in ahead of us.  The rules forbid it.  I would never have guessed that we would get the Peach Bowl even with a loss to Arkansas, but that appears to be the case.  The only thing that could push us down to the Liberty or the Music City is if the BCS does not choose two SEC teams.  That would push the loser of Alabama/Florida to the Cap One, Georgia to the Outback, and then the Peach would have to choose between us and South Carolina.  

I suppose those rumors about the Cotton Bowl picking Notre Dame over an SEC team can be officially put to bed, now that Notre Dame has lost 4 of its last 5 after getting trounced by USC last night.