bama and south carolina are in must win situations in order to get into a bowl game..

[SacFalcFan]

the sec has 8 bowl tie-ins. meaning they are guaranteed spots for 8 teams. right now the 8 teams who will take those spots are:

georgia,

tennessee

florida

kentucky

lsu

auburn

arkansas

mississippi state

if south carolina loses they will fall to 6-6 and have to hope that the sec can get another bowl to take them, but per ncaa rules if another team is 7-5 no matter what conference they must be taken over a 6-6 team. even if south carolina does win, they will still be at best the 9th rated team in the sec with their 3-5 sec record which puts them at the bottom of the sec teams (not counting vandy who doesn't have a chance with a 2-6 sec record). even if they win, south carolina making a bowl is not a guarantee especially with them falling apart the last part of the schedule and due to where they would. it could get worse even if bama wins, then they would be the 10th ranked sec squad and it would be hard for the sec to try and get 2 bowl games to take both bama and sc.

bama is in a bit of a better spot. if they lose they will be 6-6 and won't get into a bowl. however if they win, they will be 7-5 and due to tie breakers could be in the top 8 of teams based on sec record. the other advantage is they travel very well so even if they are the 9th ranked sec team, it would be easier for the sec to work with another bowl to take bama than it would to take a miss state team.

there will be so many bowl eligible teams this year that it's going to be hard to get any additional teams into bowls. there are 32 bowl games so 64 teams can be in these games. right now there are 53 teams that have 7 or more wins on the season that are bowl eligible. i counted 13 other teams that are either 6-5, 6-4, or 5-5 that all have a chance to get 7 wins. i counted 2 6-6 teams and there is a handful of 5-6 teams who still have to play one more games. so you see how tight everything is right now. it could only get more tight after today's games. just some information. i couldn't sleep at 4:30am so i thought i would look this up.