2011 Bowl Schedule: SEC Will Dominate Non-BCS Slate

It's one thing for the SEC to monopolize the BCS Championship Game with LSU and Alabama, the cream of its crop and that of college football as a whole.

It's another entirely for the best league in the nation to own the rest of the bowl schedule, but that's precisely what the SEC is set to do.

The conference will have six teams playing in games outside of the BCS (eight, if you include future members Texas A&M and Missouri). The SEC is 24-12 in bowl games over the last four years—the best mark of any league—and there's little reason to believe that sort of dominance won't continue in 2011.

The slate begins on Dec. 30 in the Music City Bowl, wherein Mississippi State will meet ACC challenger Wake Forest. The Bulldogs endured a decidedly disappointing season despite returning the bruising backfield tandem of Chris Relf and Vick Ballard from the squad that won nine games and destroyed Michigan in the Gator Bowl last season.

This time around, it's Dan Mullen who figures to be the lame duck coach. His name's running through the rumor mill as the top candidate to replace Joe Paterno at Penn State. Neither team in this matchup is particularly good, though you can expect MSU to spend the day rumbling over a Demon Deacons defense that gave up 41 points to Vanderbilt in the regular-season finale.

Speaking of Vandy, the Commodores are back to playing football in December for the first time since 2008. Rookie head coach James Franklin (not to be confused with the QB at Mizzou) has done a terrific job of turning around a program that won just four games in the two seasons prior to his arrival.

His team's reward? A matchup with Cincinnati, the co-champions of the Big East, in the Liberty Bowl on New Year's Eve. If Vandy's Jordan Rodgers plays even half as well as older brother Aaron has, his Commodores should have little trouble ousting the Bearcats, though beating Munchie Legaux in a "Best Name" contest will prove a much tougher task.

Later that evening, Auburn will clash with Virginia at the Georgia Dome in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. It's a far cry from the BCS title game for the Tigers, who rode the efforts of Heisman Trophy-winner Cam Newton and Lombardi Award-winner Nick Fairley to a crystalline victory over Oregon.

Still, Gene Chizik's crew returns BCS MVP Michael Dyer along with backfield 'mate Onterio McCalebb. The Cavaliers haven't faced a backfield of that caliber all season and will be hard-pressed to do much to stop it once they do.

And then, there's the trio of bowl games against teams from the Big Ten, a conference the SEC has thoroughly dominated in recent years.

That is, unless you count Ohio State's win over Arkansas in the 2011 Sugar Bowl, a victory the NCAA ultimately stripped from the Buckeyes' record books.

The SEC will have a distinct home-field advantage in each of the three games—the Outback Bowl, the Capital One Bowl and the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl—as all of them will be contested in the state of Florida. Interestingly enough, all three will also be broadcast at 1 p.m. EST on Jan. 2.

Georgia figures to feast on Michigan State in the Outback Bowl. Sparty got stomped by Alabama 49-7 in its last tilt with an SEC team. While the Bulldogs are hardly the Crimson Tide, they've got more than enough talent on both sides of the ball, with Aaron Murray and Isaiah Crowell on offense and a stout defense, to give Kirk Cousins and company fits on the way to a victory in this matchup of conference title-game losers.

South Carolina has a pretty strong defense of its own and will show as much against Nebraska in the Capital One Bowl. The Huskers haven't scored more than 25 points in a single game since mid-October and won't likely have any more success against the Gamecocks, whose opponents have averaged a mere 18.8 points per game this season. The head-to-head battle between quarterbacks Taylor Martinez and Connor Shaw will be well worth watching, with the edge belonging to Shaw thanks in large part to All-American wide receiver Alshon Jeffery.

And last, but certainly not least, we have the Gator Bowl, known otherwise as the Urban Meyer Bowl, featuring Ohio State and Florida. The Buckeyes are ways away from last year's cheaply tattooed team while the Gators still feature many of the same names and faces that helped them down Penn State in the previous Outback Bowl. This one looks quite evenly matched on paper, though expect Florida's team speed to give OSU fits on both sides of the ball.

Of course, the SEC will have a least one loser this bowl season, with LSU and Bama squaring off in their title-game sequel. Overall, though, the conference is in prime position to prove once again that Dixieland is, indeed, the deserved center of the college football universe.