Bowl projections: Arizona to the Cactus Bowl?

Or how about playing Florida State in El Paso?

After improving to 4-2 on Saturday night, the Arizona Wildcats have put themselves in a pretty good position for bowl eligibility and possibly more.

Not a lot of people saw this coming, so now we’re starting to see Arizona show up on various bowl projections around the internet.

So where will they go? Well...maybe not very far from home. Here’s a look at some possible destinations with projected opponents in italics:

Cactus Bowl (Dec. 26th, Chase Field, Phoenix, AZ)

• CBS’ Jerry Palm (North Texas)
• ESPN’s David Hale (Kansas State)
• USA Today’s Erick Smith (Kansas State)

So the tie-in is the Big 12, but Palm has UNT filling that spot for the time being. That would be unfortunate for Arizona, who would obviously rather take on a Power Five team in a postseason game like this one.

Arizona playing a team like Kansas State in a bowl game is actually kind of intriguing to me. You get the mainstay of Bill Snyder and you get a Big 12 team, which is a conference that Arizona plays often in the near future.

And you have to love the confusion of Wildcats playing Wildcats with school colors that aren’t terribly far apart from each other. Oh, and playing in a baseball stadium.

Arizona Bowl (Dec. 29th, Arizona Stadium, Tucson, AZ)

• ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura (Wyoming)

Nope, no thanks. The only upside to this is getting those extra bowl practices. Nothing else would be good about being forced to play in this game.

Sun Bowl (Dec. 29th, Sun Bowl, El Paso, TX)

• SI’s Eric Single (Florida State)

Yes, yes, and more yes. Arizona playing a program like FSU at a stadium they’ve already seen this year? Yep, I’ll take that.

I get that the Noles aren’t the Noles we’re used to, but I’m pretty sure any Arizona fan would want to see this team play a program like that, even if it takes a return trip to El Paso to do it.

Las Vegas (Dec. 16th, Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, NV)

• Brett McMurphy (San Diego State)

While I would personally love this matchup to come to fruition, it wouldn’t do Arizona a lot of good. SDSU has become arguably the most dangerous western Group of Five team, and has been a good program for a while now. But the Wildcats also wouldn’t gain a lot by winning, and they’d be laughed at for losing it a la Boise State 2014.

However, this game would have all of the rushing yards.

None

• SB Nation’s Jason Kirk

C’mon motherland, give us some respect!

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The Pac-12 has six bowl tie-ins this year. They are: Sun (vs. ACC or Notre Dame), Alamo (vs. Big 12), Cactus (vs. Big 12), Foster Farms (vs. Big Ten), Holiday (vs. Big Ten), and Las Vegas (vs. Mountain West).

Presumably there would be one representative from the conference in the College Football Playoff, making seven slots for the Pac-12. Nine teams in the Pac-12 are at four wins or better right now, and only one school has a losing record overall (sorry OSU). So there could be some weird placements for Pac-12 teams for postseason play that no one will see coming until we arrive at Championship Weekend.

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