College football bowl projections: Arizona looking at Holiday Bowl trip?

San Diego anyone?

After improving to 4-1 in conference play on Saturday, the Arizona Wildcats control their own destiny in the Pac-12 South heading into November.

With that, the bowl projections are getting bigger and bigger with each passing week. This Saturday’s win over Washington State also leaves the Pac-12 with a single one-loss team remaining (Washington), significantly hurting the conference’s chances at a College Football Playoff bid.

So that shifts things around in the Pac-12’s six bowl tie-ins, and moves Arizona up. Here’s a look at some of the latest projections:

Holiday Bowl (Dec. 28th — San Diego, CA)

• CBS (vs. Northwestern)
• Sports Illustrated (vs. Michigan)
• SB Nation (vs. Iowa)

Yeah, it’s about that time where Arizona gets its once-a-decade Holiday Bowl bid, so this makes sense. And woo boy could you imagine Rich Rodriguez taking on Michigan in a high-profile bowl game the year he was supposed to lose his job in Tucson? And in the year that Jim Harbaugh is starting to receive some criticism? Give me that any day.

Alamo Bowl (Dec. 28th — San Antonio, TX)

• ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura (vs. Oklahoma State)

This matchup would be better for me personally than anything else. I now live in Dallas, so going to this game would be easiest for me. And it’s against a school that several of my new coworkers went to, so there would be plenty on the line in that regard.

This could also be Arizona’s true redemption for that 2010 embarrassment in the Alamodome. Plus, that matchup between Heisman finalists Khalil Tate and Mason Rudolph is pretty enticing.

Sun Bowl (Dec. 29th — El Paso, TX)

• ESPN’s David Hale (vs. Louisville)
• Sporting News (vs. Virginia Tech)
• Bleacher Report (vs. Virginia)

Honestly, this still feels like the most likely scenario for Arizona. I would guess that USC ends up in the Holiday Bowl and Washington in the Alamo Bowl, with either Arizona or Stanford ending up in this game. With no Rose Bowl tie-in this year, the Pac-12 is going to end up with a really strange lineup, and will have a bunch of teams in bowl games that need to fill spots. It also seems likely that the Pac-12 Champ would end up in the Fiesta or Cotton Bowl.

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