SEC will send a team to the Las Vegas Bowl this year; could it be Kentucky?

Kentucky football’s loss to Georgia combined with multiple upsets around the Southeastern Conference on Saturday has further complicated the Wildcats’ bowl outlook.

At 6-5, Kentucky has already clinched a bowl berth. Mark Stoops’ team is almost certain to fall into the SEC’s “Pool of Six” bowl tier, which includes the ReliaQuest, Gator, Music City, Texas, Las Vegas and Liberty bowls, but there will be a large group of SEC teams who finish the regular season at 7-5 or 6-6 in contention for those spots.

The bowls in the “Pool of Six” all technically hold the same weight in the SEC’s selection process, but the ReliaQuest Bowl (formerly known as the Outback Bowl) is generally perceived as the top option for programs in that tier due to its status as a Florida game traditionally played on New Year’s Day. South Carolina’s upset of Tennessee makes it less likely Kentucky is sent to the Tampa game since the Gamecocks are now assured to at least match UK’s overall record and have the advantage of a head-to-head win over the Wildcats this season.

Further complicating projections for the SEC’s “Pool of Six” bowls is the presence of the Las Vegas Bowl, which has not fielded an SEC team since 2000, meaning there is no track record for how the league office views that game.

“Certainly Kentucky is very attractive to us,” Las Vegas Bowl executive director John Saccenti told the Herald-Leader on Friday, before the weekend games. “We’ve not had them play in our game on the football side of things, but we’ve certainly seen how passionate and how committed their fan base is. They are certainly one that is in there.”

The selection process for the SEC assignments in the “Pool of Six” bowls is not like the traditional bowl selection order.

Rather than having the bowls pick teams in a predetermined order, the league office takes input from the bowls and schools and then assigns teams to the games. Among the criteria the SEC uses is avoiding repeat trips and matchups within a certain window.

The SEC has sent the ReliaQuest Bowl an eight-win team every year since the current bowl selection process was adopted, but there might not be an eight-win team available in the “Pool of Six” this year. South Carolina and Mississippi State could still reach eight wins with upsets of rivals Clemson and Ole Miss, respectively, in their regular-season finales. Ole Miss, which already has reached eight wins, could also fall into the “Pool of Six” if the College Football Playoff committee drops Tennessee out of a New Year’s Six bowl game following its loss to South Carolina.

If Georgia, LSU, Alabama and Tennessee all stay in position for a New Year’s Six bowl and Missouri loses to Arkansas, Vanderbilt loses to Tennessee and Auburn loses to Alabama this weekend, the SEC will not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill its “Pool of Six” games. Usually that means the Liberty Bowl replaces its SEC spot with a team from another conference.

Kentucky is unlikely to be sent to the Gator Bowl since it last played there after the 2020 season. That leaves the Music City, Las Vegas and Texas bowls as the most likely options.

“The pool process is a little different for us,” Saccenti said. “I’m still learning how to navigate asking for what we want, talking to the conference and then talking to some of my other friends around the bowl world that are in the pool to find out what they’re doing. There are some good teams in that pool and some teams that have great name brands as well. So, we’re excited about the opportunity for whoever ends up in there.”

There are downsides to each of those three options for Kentucky.

The Music City Bowl kicks off at the same time as the Kentucky-Louisville men’s basketball rivalry game on New Year’s Eve. Does Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart really want to force his fans to pick between those two games after the summer feud between John Calipari and Mark Stoops?

The Texas Bowl is an awkward geographic fit since it has generally fielded a team from the SEC West. The two years the Texas Bowl was sent a team from the East Division, the SEC office picked Missouri (2017) and Vanderbilt (2018), the two most western teams in the division.

While the Las Vegas Bowl would offer an exciting new trip for fans and players, it will be played on Dec. 17 this year. That is the final Saturday before the December football signing period opens. The week leading up to that game when teams would be in Las Vegas for various pre-bowl events is usually a week where coaches are on the road delivering their final recruiting pitches or hosting prospects on campus for visits.

“It’s nothing new to us,” Saccenti said. “We’ve had the game in the pre-Christmas time slot during this recruiting calendar before. Coaches seem to find a way to get it done.

“… I think all the coaches handle it a little differently. But at the same time, on the flip side of that I will tell you every coach has said to me, ‘It’s a tough couple weeks, it’s a hard couple weeks but once we get the game over with and we get to go home and enjoy the holidays with our family and watch every other game on TV, that’s kind of a cool feeling as well.’ So, there’s a little bit of a trade-off on the plus side, as well.”

The Las Vegas Bowl features the only matchup between the SEC and Pac-12 teams among the non-playoff bowls. The bowl’s contract with the SEC sees the league alternate years with the Big Ten to send a team to Las Vegas over the next four years.

Kentucky has played only one Pac-12 team in its history with wins over Oregon State in Lexington in 1968 and 1976. The Wildcats have never played a game farther west than Austin, Texas.

While there are not many Pac-12 matchups that would bring clear storylines for Kentucky, one possibility could match the Wildcats with UCLA. The Las Vegas Bowl starts shortly after the Kentucky-UCLA basketball matchup in the CBS Sports Classic in New York City should end on Dec. 17. That matchup would provide a cross-country football-basketball doubleheader between the two programs.

The CBS Sports Classic could also complicate Kentucky’s case for playing in Las Vegas, though.

“Travel is incredibly important to us,” Saccenti said. “When this game was created 32 years ago it was created for one reason and one reason only: It was the only week in the calendar year that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority could not figure out a way to get people to travel to Las Vegas. We had 51 weeks out of the year where this place was operating at 90% capacity and there was one week they could not get people to travel to Las Vegas, and that was the week before Christmas. So, the bowl game was designed to try to get people to come.”

Would some Kentucky fans traveling to New York for the basketball game that weekend cut into the possible traveling party to Las Vegas? Even if you take the basketball game out of consideration, there are real reasons to wonder how excited fans might be to travel the week before Christmas given the football team’s failure to match its preseason hype.

Beating Louisville in the Governor’s Cup rivalry game is step one for Kentucky to maximize the amount of say it has in its bowl destination. A win over the rival would also surely increase the excitement of fans to travel for a bowl.

But a loss to Louisville leaves Kentucky at 6-6 heading into bowl selection Sunday. Record is not guaranteed to correlate with how the SEC assigns its teams to the “Pool of Six” bowls, but history suggests if two teams have the same bowl listed on the top of their priority list the team with the better record (or head-to-head win in case of the same record) is awarded preference. There also remains a scenario, though an unlikely one, where a 6-6 Kentucky team is dropped out of the “Pool of Six” all together if Tennessee falls out of New Year’s Six bowl contention and at least one of Missouri, Vanderbilt and Auburn pulls off an upset this weekend to reach bowl eligibility.

The Birmingham Bowl has next pick of SEC teams after the “Pool of Six” bowls are filled. The Gasparilla Bowl has final selection if there are any eligible SEC teams remaining.

“I’ve been doing this now for 20 years,” Saccenti said. “Just when you think you hone in on something, something happens those last couple of weeks of college football that throws it all up in the air. So, you can only be so prepared, knowing that something is going to happen on one side of the equation for us and throw every plan out the window.”

Next game

Louisville at Kentucky

When: 3 p.m. Saturday

TV: SEC Network

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Louisville 7-4 (4-4 ACC), Kentucky 6-5 (3-5 SEC)

Series: Kentucky leads 18-15

Last meeting: Kentucky won 52-21 on Nov. 27, 2021, at Louisville.

This story was originally published November 21, 2022 at 6:30 AM.

Jon Hale

Lexington Herald-Leader

(859) 414-6776

Jon Hale is the University of Kentucky football beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the Herald-Leader in 2022 but has covered UK athletics for more than 10 years. Hale was named the 2021 Kentucky Sportswriter of the Year. Support my work with a digital subscription