Missouri bowl outlook: Fiesta or Alamo
The Big 12 bowls are falling into line although nothing can be official until Sunday evening.
Here’s where it stands for Missouri: Beat Oklahoma and its the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 5. Lose and it is looking more and more like a trip to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29, according to conversations with officials at each of the bowls affiliated with the Big 12.
Here’s how it ends up that way with the Big 12 teams and the league’s bowl affiliations.
Oklahoma (assuming it beats Missouri) and Texas will get spots in the BCS bowls.
Then the rest of the selection order goes like this:
Cotton: Texas Tech
Holiday: It looks like Oklahoma State will get the nod over Missouri, thanks in part to the head-to-head win over the Tigers earlier this year. A slight chance this could change but it looks like the San Diego bowl would take a 9-3 OSU team over a 9-4 Missouri team.
Gator: The Jacksonville game takes a Big 12 team and goes with Nebraska.
Alamo: It’s Missouri vs. a Big Ten team.
Sun: Out of the Big 12 rotation now that the Gator has taken Nebraska.
Insight: Kansas.
Northwestern is actually a good team, but the point is moot since they’ll likely be in the Outback Bowl anyway.
I say we quit with this attitude worrying about the Gator/Alamo pecking order. Why not go into attitude that we can beat Oklahoma and get a BCS Bowl bid (Fiesta or Sugar)? You can’t beat a team if you don’t believe you can. Whether it’s realistic or not, we need to go into this game with the proper attitude.