All of the college football experts around the country who predict which teams will play in which bowl games now have Iowa penciled into the Jan. 4 Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. And almost all of them have the Hawkeyes projected to play unbeaten Boise State.
Of course, those are only predictions, and things could change between now and when Bowl Championship Series berths are officially announced Sunday night.
If Nebraska beats Texas in the Big 12 championship game Saturday night, Nebraska then would receive the Big 12’s automatic bid into the BCS, and Texas likely would get an at-large bid. That would bump either Iowa or Boise State out of the BCS. The Hawkeyes then probably would be in line for the Jan. 1 Capital One Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
All the national bowl projections now have Iowa State slated to play in either the Texas Bowl on Dec. 31 in Houston or the Independence Bowl on Dec. 28 in Shreveport, La.
Navy already is locked into the other Texas Bowl slot. The Cyclones’ opponent in the Independence would be an SEC team, most likely Kentucky, although CBSSports.com has the Cyclones facing Auburn, led by former ISU coach Gene Chizik.
The only other team from the two-state region which will play in a bowl is Northern Illinois. The consensus of the national projections is that the Huskies would face Idaho in the Dec. 30 Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho, although two predictors have them playing Marshall in the Eagle Bank Bowl on Dec. 29 in Washington, D.C., and one has them facing Middle Tennessee State in the Dec. 26 Little Caesar’s Pizza Bowl in Detroit.
