After the BCS games pick, the Capital One Bowl picks from all available SEC teams (cannot go more than one conference loss below the next available team)
If Alabama and Auburn were picked by the BCS games, then currently the Capital One Bowl could pick between LSU, Mississippi State, Arkansas or South Carolina.
If the Cap One Bowl picked LSU, then the Cotton, Peach and Outback have the next pick, together. All three bowls rank the next tier of teams (which in this case would be 2 and 3 loss teams (Mississippi State, Arkansas, South Carolina, Florida). Traditionally, the Cotton takes a West team and the Outback takes an East team, but there is no requirement.
Hypothetically, lets say that this is the order of prerference:
Cotton: Arkansas, MSU, Florida
Outback: Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas
Peach: Florida, Mississippi State, South Carolina
Arkansas would go to the Cotton Bowl. Florida would be offered the choice of the Outback and Peach. If they chose the Outback, Mississippi State would go to the Peach Bowl and South Carolina would go to the next tier, If they chose the Peach, South Carolina would go to the Outback and Mississippi State would drop to the next tier.
The next tier is the Gator Bowl by itself. Mississippi State or South Carolina, the loser in the above scenario, would be the only eligible team.
The next tier is the Liberty and Music City Bowls. The sequence is the same as above. Georgia, Kentucky and lets say Tennessee wins out gets to 6-6 would be available, just to make it interesting.
Music City: Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky
Liberty: Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia
Both Tennessee bowls want Tennessee, and Tennessee would rather play in the Music City Bowl than the Liberty. The Liberty's second choice is Kentucky rather than Georgia, so Kentucky goes to the Liberty and Georgia drops to the next tier.
Birmingham Bowl: Georgia is the only team available and they get a big name team for a low level bowl. Georgia fans are pissed because they felt like they deserved the Music City Bowl.
This could happen. I think we end up in the Peach Bowl, but the Gator is a possibility. We beat Arkansas, we may get to the Cotton by default. Arkansas could end the season two losses behind us as they still have to play LSU and South Carolina. But you could see a situation where we still ended up in Atlanta because Cotton would take Florida. If there are only three teams in that Cotton/Peach/Outback tier, it would probably be USC/Florida/MSU. I feel confident that the Cotton would prefer Florida, the Outback would prefer USC and we would default to Peach.
If the same system were in effect in 1999 (sans the Gator, Liberty and Birmingham Bowls, who did not have a tie-in)
BCS took Alabama and Tennessee
Capital One could have chosen between Florida and Mississippi State. (they chose Florida)
Outback/Peach/Cotton could have chosen between Mississippi State and Georgia (Outback chose Georgia, Peach chose MSU, Cotton ended up with Arkansas who was 4-4 in the SEC, but they could have taken Ole Miss or Kentucky as there were no available 5-3 teams)
Music City/Independence could have chosen Kentucky or Ole Miss (Music City chose UK, Indy took Ole Miss)