The bowls in this pool—the Outback Bowl, TaxSlayer Bowl, Music City Bowl, Texas Bowl, Belk Bowl and Liberty—are filled by the SEC in conjuncture with the individual bowls and schools.
All I'm saying is according to that above, the SEC, bowls, and schools all work together in selecting where the school goes. Mitch represents the school and he cares about all sports. That is why I've maintained that I believe the basketball game and the football game being on the same day might eliminate a bowl from consideration. You know Mitch will go into these talks using that to help with our bowl selection. Who's to say that isn't the reason the Belk Bowl talk has died down some and the TaxSlayer has picked up?
You football first people take it as a slight when I said I don't want to sacrifice one sport for the other. That is because I enjoy them equally and want to watch them both live and some of us don't have DVRs. I might even try to go to the bowl if I can, but I'm not missing the basketball game to do it. I'm sure there are plenty of other fans that feel the same way. That is why I said Mitch would have failed in considering this and that is also why I don't think he did and we will get a better bowl because of it.
Football and basketball have to coexist here unlike most SEC schools. That is why I think that will be one of the deciding factors in our bowl destination. We are the flagship of the conference in basketball and I think that is still worth something to the SEC.