AU FOOTBALL: Tigers headed for Outback Bowl

Auburn is headed back to Tampa for the Outback Bowl for the first time in 14 years, but the official announcement won’t be made until Sunday.

Mike Schulze, the Outback Bowl’s Director of Communications, said early Tuesday that the bowl had hoped to extend an official invitation to its proposed SEC representative for the New Year’s Day bowl by sometime Tuesday afternoon. But, even after the Bowl Championship Series’ Tuesday conference call, which narrowed the field to 16 teams for its five bowl games and allowed non-BCS bowls to officially announce its respective participants, Schulze said the Outback Bowl’s announcement will come in conjunction with the rest of the SEC’s on the conference’s Sunday selection show.

“The SEC team for the Outback Bowl will not be announced today as originally thought,” Schulze wrote. “Both the SEC and Big Ten teams will be announced Sunday afternoon/evening December 6th.”

Schulze could not be reached for comment after his e-mail was delivered Tuesday evening.

Regardless, the news reached Auburn’s players Tuesday, some of whom expressed their excitement via Twitter.

“Outback Bowl!!!” tweeted reserve punter Ryan Shoemaker.

“tampa bound already...lol” H-Back Mario Fannin tweeted at one of his followers Tuesday afternoon.

The Outback Bowl broke tradition by choosing the Tigers, who were one of six SEC teams to finish the regular season with a 7-5 record. The bowl has typically chosen the best available SEC East team while the Cotton Bowl has typically chosen the best remaining team from the West.

The West will apparently be represented in both, though, as Ole Miss is set to accept a Cotton Bowl invitation in the coming days, according to a report in the Jackson-Clarion Ledger. Fellow SEC West teams LSU, which is expected to accept a Capital One Bowl invitation, and undefeated Alabama, which will advance to the National Championship if it beats Florida in Saturday’s SEC Championship or the Sugar Bowl if it loses, give the West four teams in the conference’s top five bowl games.

Tennessee will face Virginia Tech in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, according to unnamed sources close to the bowl selection process in the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

The Outback Bowl, played at the home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Raymond James Stadium, matches up an SEC team with the No. 3 team from the Big 10. If either Iowa or Penn State are chosen to join conference champions Ohio State in one of the five BCS bowl games, the Outback Bowl will then receive the fourth overall choice. The third overall choice is given to the Capital One Bowl.

That scenario would likely make Wisconsin the frontrunner to play Auburn, though Northwestern, which beat the Badgers to end its season, could be another possibility. Northwestern athletics director Jim Phillips has been stumping for the Wildcats, who finished 8-4, to make their first bowl trip to Florida in 13 years.

“There are 158 daily flights from Chicago to Tampa,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

Auburn has faced Wisconsin twice this decade, beating the Badgers, 28-14, in the 2003 Music City Bowl and losing, 24-10, in 2005 at the Capital One Bowl.

Wisconsin, which sits at 8-3, wraps up its season Saturday at Hawaii.

The Tigers have never faced Northwestern in their 117-year history.

Auburn’s last trip to Tampa came after the 1995 season, when it lost to Penn State, 43-14.

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