SEC picks up Liberty Bowl for 2006

The Liberty Bowl will be joining the SEC Bowl group (HT to FanBlogs.com). This is a good financial and geographic deal for the SEC. The Liberty Bowl has always been a solid bowl in a fun city.

If handled properly, it's an especially good deal for the SEC West, Tennessee and Kentucky. However, I was hoping for a better matchup than the Conference USA Champ.

A bowl game between Ole Miss and Southern Miss would be interesting if only because of the bad blood. But the matchups wouldn't seem to have much national appeal.

The types of matchups you might see one day:
Arkansas vs. Houston (old SWC rival meet again)
Arkansas vs. Memphis
Mississippi State vs. Memphis
Kentucky vs. Memphis
Ole Miss vs. Marshall
Alabama vs. UAB (if the SEC would allow it)
Kentucky vs. Southern Miss
South Carolina vs. East Carolina

If Louisville and TCU were still in CUSA and if Marshall's program wasn't heading down the tubes, this would have been a more interesting bowl tie-in. Right bowl. Wrong conference to tie the SEC into.

Hopefully, this bowl tie-in will never impact Georgia. ;-)

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