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Bowl Projections: Where will Cougs go bowling after Apple Cup win?

The Pac-12 will finish the 2021 season with six bowl eligible teams, including Washington State (7-5), which is coming off an emotional Apple Cup victory last Friday night.

The Pac-12 has affiliations (tie-ins) with seven bowls (in order of priority): the CFP Playoff, Rose, Alamo, Las Vegas, Holiday, Sun and LA Bowl. They also have secondary agreements with three mid-tier bowls: Armed Forces, First Responder, and Gasparilla.

However, the Pac-12 has been eliminated from CFP consideration since every conference team has at least two losses. As a result, the conference champion will play in the Rose Bowl against a Big Ten team, and all six Pac-12 bowl eligible teams will play in a Pac-12 affiliated bowl game.

The six bowl eligible Pac-12 teams are: WSU (7-5), Oregon (10-2), Oregon State (7-5), Utah (9-3), Arizona State (8-4) and UCLA (8-4).

USC (4-7) and Cal (4-7) were both eliminated from bowl consideration with losses to BYU and UCLA, respectively, this past weekend. Those two teams will play a meaningless make-up game on Dec. 4.

Six P12 teams have now been eliminated from bowl consideration because they currently have 7 or more losses: Washington (4-8), Stanford (3-9), Colorado (4-8) and Arizona (1-11) were previously eliminated from bowl consideration.

Here is where some national analysts believe WSU will go bowling this season:

Brett McMurphy, Action Network: LA Bowl vs. San Diego State (Dec. 18).

Jerry Palm, CBS Sports: Sun Bowl vs. Miami (Dec. 31).

Kyle Bonagura, ESPN: Sun Bowl vs. Louisville (Dec. 31)

Mark Schlabach, ESPN: Sun Bowl vs. Miami (Dec. 31)

Sports Illustrated: LA Bowl vs. San Diego State (Dec. 18)

Athlon: Sun Bowl vs. Miami (Dec. 31)

College Football News: Sun Bowl vs. Miami (Dec. 31)

As you can see, most analysts are predicting WSU will land in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, TX, which makes sense considering where the Cougars are on the Pac-12 bowl ladder in terms of wins.

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