Auburn’s bowl destination will not become official until after the SEC Championship Game on Dec. 1, but in the meantime, I have created two scenarios that may give you a better idea where the Tigers will be playing during the holidays.

But before getting to that, you must first understand how the SEC’s eight bowl tie-ins choose teams.

Sugar Bowl, First Pick: The Sugar Bowl automatically gets the winner of the SEC Championship Game. This year the Sugar Bowl is played a week before the BCS national title game in New Orleans.

Capital One Bowl, Second Pick: The Capital One Bowl must select the SEC team with the best record or a team within one win of the team with the best record.

Outback Bowl and Cotton Bowl, Third and Fourth Picks: The Cotton has the first preference of teams from the West Division and the Outback has the first preference of teams from the East Division.

The Cotton or Outback can select teams outside of its divisional preference, but must not select them before the opposite bowl selects from its divisional preference.

Chick-fil-A Bowl, Fifth Pick: The former Peach Bowl gets the next pick.

Liberty Bowl and Music City Bowl, Sixth and Seventh Pick: These two will make their selections, not in any specific order.

The bowls will rank teams in order of preference. If there are no similarities in the order of selection, the bowls will be granted its selection. If the bowls rank the same teams in preference, the team involved in the process would get its preference of which bowl in which to participate.

Independence Bowl, Eighth Pick: The Shreveport, La.-based bowl gets the final pick.

OK, here are the two scenarios.

Scenario A — Auburn beats Alabama: LSU makes it to the BCS title game.

To do that, the Tigers beat remaining opponents Ole Miss and Arkansas and then win the SEC Championship Game, probably over Tennessee or Georgia.

If that happens, the BCS would likely take another team from the SEC to play in the Sugar Bowl.

Remember the Sugar Bowl is different from the BCS Championship Game. Although they are both played in New Orleans, the Sugar is on Jan. 1 and the title game is six days later.

A team must have nine wins and be in the top 14 of the BCS standings to play in a BCS game. There is a possibility that two or three SEC teams will fit into that category.

For the sake of saving time and ink, let’s quickly make Tennessee, which controls its own destiny in the SEC East, the loser in the SEC Championship Game to LSU. A late loss like that would take them out of qualifications for a BCS spot, giving them a fourth loss and moving them out of the top 14.

Pending Florida beating Florida State and Georgia taking care of Kentucky and Georgia Tech, one of those two teams will get picked to play in the Sugar and the other will head to the Capital One Bowl.

In this scenario, Auburn beats Alabama in the Iron Bowl, leaving the Outback and Cotton bowls fighting over 9-4 Tennessee and 8-4 Auburn. It’s possible Mississippi State also could be in that mix at 8-4 if the Bulldogs were to win-out. And if Kentucky wins of one its last two, the Wildcats also could be in the mix.

But it’s safe to say that Tennessee and Auburn — with greater fan followings — would be the favorites for the Outback or Cotton.

Scenario B — Auburn loses to Alabama: In this scenario, the only thing that changes is the Iron Bowl outcome. After a loss to Alabama, the Tigers will likely find themselves nowhere near consideration for the Outback or Cotton.

The next selection, Chick-fil-A, may pick the Tigers, but they’ll have competition.

Kentucky would need to win one of their last two games to be in the mix at 8-4. If Arkansas or Mississippi win out — they play each other
this weekend — that would make another 8-4 team competing with a 7-5 Auburn
squad.

The Tigers would likely fall to one of the Tennessee bowls — Music City or Liberty, while rival Alabama appears in the Cotton, Outback or even Chick-fil-A.

The Cotton and Outback both pay $3 million. The Tennessee bowls pay half of that, while the Chick-fil-A pays $2.4 million.

So, despite no championship being on the line, the Iron Bowl is still huge.