THE BIG STORY

Tommy Tuberville accepted a bid to the Chick-fil-A Bowl Sunday, and then tap-danced around questions that sought to reveal whether he would be around to coach in it.

Auburn (8-4) will play Clemson (9-3) Dec. 31 at 6:30 p.m. in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, the bowl announced Sunday.

But fans who hoped that Tuberville would use the Sunday night teleconference to clear up rumors and address his uncertain status were sorely disappointed.

Reporters tried, but no definitive statement was forthcoming.

Athletic Director Jay Jacobs, who offered a two-year contract extension to Tuberville on Friday, handled the situation as nimbly as he could.

“It’s nice to have a coach that is wanted,” Jacobs said. “We have 15 head coaches. I wish they were all wanted as much as Tommy.

“There’s never been any doubt in my mind that Tommy is going to be our head coach for a long time.”

After it became clear Tuberville was not going to chime in, a reporter pressed.

“Tommy, do you concur?”

“I concur,” Tuberville said. Then he joked, “How do you spell that?”

That was it.

When the subject was brought up again, Tuberville said, “Let’s talk about the Chick-fil-A Bowl.”

Jacobs hastily added, “Yeah, I’m for that, too.”

Auburn’s tentative schedule calls for the Tigers to begin bowl practice Dec. 13. They’ll work for about a week, break for Christmas and then arrive on Atlanta on either Dec. 25 or Dec. 26.

Tuberville used humor to deflect questions about whether he would be there

“(I’ll be there), unless you want to coach ‘em,” he told one reporter.

Both Jacobs and Tuberville said they had not been contacted by Arkansas, repeating denials issued Thursday, when several Arkansas media outlets reported that Tuberville was on the verge of becoming the Razorbacks new coach.

Contract negotiations failed to produce a resolution last week. Tuberville is now in New York in advance of Tuesday’s National Football Foundation awards dinner. Jacobs is expected to join him there. Auburn President Jay Gogue is also in New York on unrelated business.

Around the rest of the league:

ALABAMA

Proximity, tradition and “intrigue” were among the reasons Independence Bowl officials voted to give Alabama’s flagging football season a four-week extension.

Accepting a bid Sunday as the ninth and final Southeastern Conference team, Alabama (6-6) will face Colorado (6-6) at 7 p.m. on Dec. 30 in Shreveport, La.

It marks the second consecutive year and third time this decade that the Crimson Tide has finished a season at Independence Stadium. Oklahoma State beat Alabama in the bowl’s 2006 edition.

There is a tradition with Alabama that is very appealing locally,” bowl chairman Joe Darwin said. “And then, looking at Colorado and the matchup on the field — not only for the fans in the stands, but from a TV standpoint with ESPN — that matchup had some intrigue that we needed to explore.”

Alabama’s inclusion knocked bowl-eligible South Carolina (6-6) out of the postseason. Coach Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks ended their season on a five-game skid after reaching No. 6 in The Associated Press poll in mid-October.

Saying they had no one to blame but themselves, Spurrier received news of the Tide’s invitation before holding a 5 p.m. teleconference with reporters.

“The Independence Bowl, I believe, felt like they were the closest school,” Spurrier said. “They would bring a few more people.”

“Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that Alabama-Colorado was a more intriguing matchup for our game,” Darwin said.

Alabama and Colorado will each receive an allotment of 12,000 tickets, Darwin said, and teams are expected to arrive Dec. 26.

While not the most enthralling repeat destination, the Independence Bowl permits Alabama additional practice time and rare national exposure. It is college football’s lone bowl game scheduled for that Sunday.

Noting this, Tide coach Nick Saban felt the invitation was “positive in every way” for a team mired in a four-game losing streak.

“It helps develop our young players and gives our seniors an opportunity to go out as winners,” Saban said.

ARKANSAS

Houston Nutt spent a portion of his final news conference as Arkansas’ football coach lobbying for an invite to the Cotton Bowl.

After Nutt resigned last Monday, interim coach Reggie Herring took over the campaigning to get the Razorbacks a trip to Dallas for the New Year.

Apparently, the message got through, even if it came from two very different voices during a particularly uncertain time for the Razorbacks.

No. 25 Arkansas (8-4), ranked for the first time since the second week of the season, accepted an invite Sunday to face No. 7 Missouri (11-2) in the Cotton Bowl.

The game, scheduled for 10:40 a.m. Jan. 1, will continue Arkansas’ long-standing tradition of playing in Dallas. That’s exactly what Herring — and Nutt before him — wanted.

“Our biggest concern in this bowl selection thing was we had our hopes set extremely high for the Cotton (Bowl),” Herring said during a news conference Sunday night to announce the bowl invitation.

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“I think now that we know and it’s been confirmed, these players will be extremely fired up and ready to play this game.”

Arkansas’ regular season was filled with plenty of subplots, perhaps more than Nutt, his assistants and his players would have liked. There is no reason why the Cotton Bowl shouldn’t be any different.

For starters, the bowl game will showcase two players — Arkansas running back Darren McFadden and Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel — who could be invited to New York City for Saturday’s Heisman Trophy ceremony.

McFadden is considered to be in a tight two-man race with Florida’s Tim Tebow for the award, while Daniel could accompany them as a finalist.

“I’m not sure there is another bowl matchup out there that has two star players like we will have in the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic this year,” Cotton Bowl president Rick Baker said.

AUBURN

The two universities are forever linked by just a few words written by the late columnist Lewis Grizzard.

Clemson, he once said, is “Auburn with a lake.”

The two universities connected in words are now connected with a date in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Auburn accepted a berth in the bowl Sunday to play Clemson at 6:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville accepted in the Big Apple after his early arrival for the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame ceremonies.

Auburn and Clemson last played in 1997 in the Chick-fil-A - then the Peach Bowl - when Auburn won 21-17. They’ve played 47 times and will play each other in the regular season in 2010 and 2011.

Auburn, which officially is bowl-bound as the SEC’s No. 5 seed, has an 8-4 record. Auburn is making its eighth consecutive bowl appearance. Clemson, which goes in as the Atlantic Coast Conference’s No. 2 seed, has a 9-3 record.

“We’re looking forward to it, especially for our 17 seniors,” Tuberville said. “It will probably be the hardest ticket bowl game this year, including the championship game. It’s kind of like another rival game.”

The game pits two teams within easy driving distance of Atlanta.

That’s one reason why Chick-fil-A officials chose Clemson over Boston College, which finished higher than the Tigers in the ACC Atlantic Division and has beaten Clemson three straight years.

Bowl officials are expecting a sellout.

FLORIDA

While the rest of the nation waited to see how the latest BCS mess would work itself out Sunday, Florida and Michigan rather quietly accepted bids to play each other in the Jan. 1 Capital One Bowl, which is outside the BCS and nowhere near the controversy.

“This is the bowl we wanted to be in,” UF coach Urban Meyer said Sunday night. “We’re awful excited to go and play such a tradition-rich program like Michigan. I think it’s a bowl game the entire country will be excited to see.”

For a non-BCS bowl, it does offer some allure.

It will be Lloyd Carr’s last game at Michigan. It features an Ohio native (Meyer) against a Michigan man (Carr). It could have the Heisman Trophy winner (Tim Tebow) and next year’s preseason No. 1 team (if the young Gators successfully close their late run with a victory).

“I think a 9-3 (UF) team that did not have an opportunity to go play for a national championship wanted to go to the best (non-BCS) bowl game out there,” Meyer said. “It’s the Capital One Bowl in a great Gator town.

“College football is momentum. I’ve said it many times. We’ve got momentum going right now. We’re a young team. There’s a lot to play for in this game. We’re building for the future. The future is strong at Florida. We just have to get these (young) guys to improve. Momentum is everything.”

Momentum is something Michigan does not have at the moment. The Wolverines, who were upset in September by tiny Appalachian State, closed the season with back-to-back losses to Wisconsin and arch-rival Ohio State and enter the postseason 8-4 and unranked.

But Michigan will be healthy for the first time in months. Carr said Sunday that quarterback Chad Henne and tailback Mike Hart, a strong Heisman candidate coming into the season, have recovered from injuries that sidelined them for a considerable portion of the season.

“The trainer tells me Mike and Chad will be ready to play,” Carr said. “The main thing is to have a couple of good weeks preparation and go down there and put our best team together.”

Carr and Meyer spoke highly of one another Sunday night. Carr said the two met on the recruiting trail in the 1990s, when Meyer was an assistant coach at Notre Dame, and the two have remained friends.

“He’s one of the guys I’ve always liked,” Carr said of Meyer. “He’s a guy that represents all the positive things in college football.”

Meyer will have the distinction of coaching against Carr in his final game at Michigan.

“I grew up in the state of Ohio and I’m very familiar with the University of Michigan,” Meyer said. “I’ve always admired coach Carr and have great respect for the consistency his program has performed with over the last 13 years.”

GEORGIA

By the time Georgia’s players assembled at Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall, they heard enough bad news that they weren’t shocked when television’s talking heads delivered the verdict.

But that did not stop the indignation and disappointment. Not even Mark Richt’s announcement that they would wear black jerseys again could soften the sting of getting jilted by a controversial system that selects teams for the BCS title game.

“I’d already accepted the fact that it was going to turn out this way,” center Fernando Velasco said. “Just look at logic. Obviously just before they announced it, we were No. 4, and we were No. 4 for a reason. So when No. 1 and No. 2 lost, I’m not the smartest man in the world, but that means No. 3 and No. 4 go to the dance. But it didn’t happen like that.”

The BCS national title game skipped Georgia and sent the Bulldogs to the New Year’s Day Sugar Bowl to play Hawaii. Georgia will be the home team and will wear its black jerseys in the bowl.

Georgia was No. 4 in last week’s BCS. On Saturday, the top two teams, Missouri and West Virginia, lost. But on Sunday, Georgia slipped a spot in the BCS rankings. LSU and Oklahoma jumped over Georgia with the Tigers going to the title game to face Ohio State.

“It would have been a lot better to not know we were going to the BCS Championship game,” running back Thomas Brown said. “It gave us some false hope. Of course it kind of sounds biased, but I’m not in favor of the BCS system because it didn’t work for us.”

Before Saturday’s upsets, most of the Bulldogs did not expect to have the chance at the BCS title game. But as the surprises mounted, a few started to dream about the near impossible.

“I was watching it last night with Blake (Barnes),” tight end Tripp Chandler said. “We were having a good time, man. We were jumping up and down. We were thinking that we were going to get our shot. (Saturday) night, I couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning, thinking we were going to have the opportunity to hold that crystal ball and kiss it. Then poof - it’s gone.”

Fox television announced Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl in the broadcast’s first five minutes. Then it teased the completion of the matchup through three commercial breaks and the rest of the bowl slate. Fox completed the pairing with about 10 minutes left in the 30-minute broadcast.

“It was a complete tease,” Brown said. “It was too long and drawn out. They should have come right out and said Georgia wasn’t playing for the national championship. They should have told us we were going to the Sugar Bowl and gotten it over with. They had us keep hope alive and strung us along. We were thinking, ‘Hey, the two teams in front of us lost and we were No. 4, then we should be No. 2.’ If they didn’t want us to be No. 2, they shouldn’t have put us No. 4 in the first place.”

KENTUCKY

The few remaining tickets for the Cats return trip to the Music City Bowl in Nashville were snatched up by fans soon after the bowl bid was announced, University of Kentucky officials said.

“They went virtually instantly,” media relations director Tony Neely said.

The university’s allotment of 27,000 tickets were bought by season ticket holders before the bowl bid was even announced. About 500 individual tickets were available at MusicCityBowl.com Sunday evening but they were quickly sold out.

Face value for the tickets range from $15 to $70.

UK will play the Florida State Seminoles at 4 p.m. Dec. 31.

Travel and hotel packages will be available from Champions Sports Tours, which is online at championsportstours.com. Call (866) 995-7444 for more information.

Total Sports Travel also is offering a bowl package. It includes two nights hotel, game transportation and a private pre-game party. Visit www.totalsportstravel.com or call (888) 367-8781 for more information.

The game will be played at LP Field, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. It has a capacity of 69,000.

Stadium parking passes must be purchased in advance. Regular parking costs $15, and parking for recreational vehicles costs $50. Parking passes cannot be purchased on game day.

Music City Bowl officials are expecting 50,000 visitors from Kentucky and Florida State.

The 2006 Music City Bowl, in which Kentucky defeated Clemson, had the seventh highest attendance among the 32 bowls at 68,024.

The university received an allotment of 24,000 tickets last year. University officials estimate another 26,000 UK fans bought tickets separately.

LSU

Dead week begins today on the LSU campus, but everything was alive and rocking at the LSU football operations facility on an otherwise cloudy and overcast Sunday night.

The sun seemed to come up. A new season was born. There was new life. The Tigers watched the Bowl Championship Series selection show as a team and learned they would be playing for the national championship.

“Yeah,” LSU quarterback Matt Flynn said with a joyful sigh. “Sitting in that room there, it was kind of like a soap opera. We made it. I wasn’t surprised, but I was nervous. You never know until it really officially pops up there.”

LSU will play Ohio State on Jan. 7 in the BCS national title at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Tigers (11-2) rose from the ashes of No. 7 in the BCS standings last week to No. 2 on Sunday while Ohio State (11-1) moved up from No. 3 with Nos. 1 and 2 Missouri and West Virginia losing Saturday night.

LSU players peeled off in their vehicles from the football operations facility with music blaring after the show. Maybe they were going to study for next week’s exams. Maybe they weren’t. Other players danced and chanted, “We going to the ’ship! We going to the ’ship!”

Previously BCS No. 4 Georgia (10-2) fell to No. 5 behind No. 3 Virginia Tech (11-2) and No. 4 Oklahoma (11-2). Virginia Tech was a distant third behind LSU with a .8703 computer average ranking to LSU’s .9394. Ohio State’s top figure was .9588. Oklahoma, which paved the way for LSU by knocking off Missouri Saturday, was at .8572.

Georgia, not LSU, will play in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1 against Hawaii (12-0) in the under card. LSU is the first team in the history of the BCS that started in 1998 to reach the national title game with two losses, and the last one was just two weeks ago to unranked Arkansas, 50-48 in triple overtime.

“How about this team!” LSU coach Les Miles yelled. “This team has accomplished quite a lot. We’ve got ONE to play.”

Most had thought LSU lost the big one to Arkansas.

“I thought it was over then,” senior tailback Jacob Hester said. “But my older brother Adam (an assistant football coach at Captain Shreve) is a BCS expert. He told me not that much had to happen.”

And it happened. Oklahoma beating Missouri was not a shock, but 4-7 Pittsburgh — a 28-point underdog — delivered the miracle with a 13-9 win over BCS No. 2 West Virginia.

“None of us really knew everything that had to happen,” senior safety Craig Steltz said. “We were just focused on Tennessee and winning the Southeastern Conference championship.”

LSU did that with a 21-14 win Saturday night in Atlanta, then waited for the scores.

“We started figuring out who needed to do what after the game,” Steltz said. “When we got home, we thought we had a good chance.”

Then when Georgia was announced as the Sugar Bowl representative the entire LSU team erupted in the squad meeting room. The Sugar Bowl was where LSU would have gone had it not finished No. 1 or 2 in the BCS standings.

“I’ve never been so happy to hear Georgia Bulldogs in my life,” Hester said. “I’m not going to lie. I was down after we lost to Arkansas. Everybody was. This is definitely a great feeling. We’ve got new life.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m. on Jan. 7 on FOX.

But first a battered and bruised LSU team is due for some heavy down time after five consecutive weeks of games and a 12-game schedule over 13 weeks that included five games decided by a touchdown or less all on or near the last possession and two triple-overtime affairs. LSU will likely have two weeks or more away from practice before beginning bowl preparations.

“We need a break bad,” said Flynn, who sat out the Tennessee victory with an injured shoulder. “The time off will help us all a lot. I know I’ll be back 100 percent for sure and looking forward to it.”

So is All-American defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, who has fought off knee and back injuries since mid-season. He had to take himself out of Saturday’s game with a back injury.

“Without a doubt, I’ll be back at 100 percent,” a joyous Dorsey said. “You all just don’t know how I’m going to enjoy this break, get my body back right and be ready to roll come national championship game. Oh man, I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t played at 100 percent since what? It’s been awhile man since I can say I was 100 percent. We have five weeks. You don’t know how good that sounds. We’ll get some rest and be ready.”

Dorsey was last 100 percent in game eight against Auburn when he first hurt his knee.

“Looking back on this whole season, it seems like it was meant to be,” said Dorsey, who could have likely gone in the first round of the NFL draft last season despite a shin injury but elected to stay for his senior season.

“This is why I came back,” he said. “And the game’s in the Superdome. Anybody who’s from Louisiana who plays football wants to play in the dome. And we get to play the national championship in the dome.”

LSU won the last BCS national championship played in the dome in 2003.

“I know our fans are going to be crazy out there,” Dorsey said. “Before the game, I’m just going to take it all in.”

MISSISSIPPI STATE

Liberty Bowl board member Jan Gwin took the podium at a press conference here Sunday night and went through all the formalities of extending an invitation to the 49th edition of his game to Mississippi State. Then, he looked to his right, saw coach Sylvester Croom and politely cushioned that invitation with a “should you decide to accept.”

Croom laughed.

Should he decide to accept? Please. After six years of no more than three wins, a bowl berth - any bowl berth - was the best news anyone could imagine around here. And yes, the Bulldogs (7-5) formally accepted the invitation of Gwin, a former State lineman.

Don’t expect anyone around here to be whining about what could have been. With the SEC Championship Game’s result Saturday seemingly knocking out any hopes of the Music City or Chick-Fil-A bowls, the 13th bowl trip in school history fell squarely onto the shoulders of the Liberty Bowl - which had pressed State more than any other bowl over recent weeks.

“I liked being wanted,” Croom told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “They wanted us. I think it’s great for our university and I think it’s great for our state to have a chance to participate in this game.”

State will face Conference USA champion Central Florida (10-3) in the game, which will kick off at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 29, and will be televised on ESPN. State’s last trip to the Memphis postseason stop was in 1991. The Bulldogs also played in the 1963 edition of the game, which took place in Philadelphia.

It’s the first time State has played in a bowl game since the 2000 Independence Bowl, which ended a run of three straight postseason trips.

State’s wild 17-14 win over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl on Nov. 23 proved critical in securing the school’s berth. Only South Carolina (6-6) was left out of the bowl picture for the SEC, which had 10 eligible teams. Alabama (also 6-6) took the league’s last bowl spot, the Independence Bowl.

Croom, who was traveling much of last week recruiting, said he didn’t worry too much about State’s potential destination, mainly because he kept seeing Liberty Bowl executive director Steve Ehrhart standing in the background of his postgame news conferences.

“I think he’s followed us the last three or four ballgames,” Croom said. “In fact, I think he was there after every ballgame.”

Ehrhart scouted State even in its season-opening loss Aug. 30 to LSU. Ehrhart said State’s thirst to return to postseason play after a long layoff “certainly was a function of the decision-making.”

The game conflicts with Mississippi State’s previously scheduled men’s basketball game against Missouri, which is scheduled to tip off at 4 p.m. that day. MSU athletic director Larry Templeton said possible changes to that game would be at the top of his agenda today.

Clearly, the bulk of Mississippi State’s fan interest will be in the Bluff City that day. Templeton said the Liberty Bowl has given State an initial allotment of 23,000 tickets and has indicated that it would give the school more to sell.

Croom challenged his fans to break the all-time Liberty Bowl attendance record of 61,497, set when State was there in 1991.

And Ehrhart, sensing the moment, leaned into the podium and gave State fans even more fitting encouragement.

“Cowbells are welcome at the AutoZone Liberty Bowl,” he said. “Bring those cowbells on up.”

OLE MISS

New Ole Miss football coach Houston Nutt will essentially be a one-man recruiting show for his first few weeks on the job while waiting for his assistants to finish their responsibilities at Arkansas.

Nutt, who signed a 4-year, $7.4 million contract to lead the Rebels last week after coaching at Arkansas for 10 years, arrived in Oxford on Sunday and has already announced that at least six of his former Arkansas assistants will join him in Oxford.

Nutt’s original plan was for some of those six to split time between Ole Miss and Arkansas during December, recruiting for the Rebels while also helping the Razorbacks prepare for the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1.

But after discussing that idea with Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone and Chancellor Robert Khayat, Nutt decided that he didn’t want to place his assistants in the awkward position of openly working for two schools at once.

“I just thought it was in the best interest of everybody to send them back,” Nutt said. “… We’ll still be able to get everything done.”

Nutt said that by early January he hopes to have most of his staff in place. His assistants won’t physically be in Mississippi during most of December, but he did say they would be able to make some phone calls to help with recruiting.

While not an ideal situation, Nutt said he was confident his staff would still bring in a quality recruiting class thanks to their experience in the Southeastern Conference.

“This is what makes recruiting very, very tough - very competitive,” Nutt said. “But we’re used to that. Being in the SEC, you roll up your sleeves and go to work. I’m looking forward to it.”

Nutt said he met with Ole Miss defensive coordinator John Thompson and receivers coach Hugh Freeze on Sunday. Both coaches have expressed interest in staying at Ole Miss.

Thompson was Nutt’s defensive coordinator in 2000 and 2001 at Arkansas. Freeze is also the Rebels’ recruiting coordinator.

While praising both Thompson and Freeze, Nutt said he hadn’t made any final decisions.

“Both of them are very good coaches,” Nutt said. “… (But) I’m going to talk to the guys that I’ve been with the past 10, 11 years (at Arkansas) first.”

Nutt also said there was a chance that he would bring in one or two assistants from outside both the Arkansas or Ole Miss programs who had worked with him at previous schools.

Nutt announced on Friday that offensive coordinator David Lee, tight ends coach James Shibest, running game coordinator Mike Markuson, recruiting coordinator Chris Vaughn and defensive line coach Tracy Rocker will join him in Oxford after the Cotton Bowl.

On Sunday, he also mentioned that his high school relations director Clifton Ealy would join him at Ole Miss.

Arkansas defensive coordinator Reggie Herring was named interim head coach after Nutt resigned last week and will coach the Cotton Bowl. But he could also follow Nutt to Oxford if he’s replaced by an outside hire.

SOUTH CAROLINA

South Carolina season that began with talk of competing for the conference title ended with the thud heard ’round the SEC.

The Gamecocks, 6-1 and ranked No. 6 in the country in mid-October, are not going to a bowl game.

As expected, the Independence Bowl picked Alabama over USC (6-6) for the SEC’s ninth and final bowl slot Sunday, pairing Colorado against a 6-6 Crimson Tide team that dropped its final four regular-season games.

Officials for the Shreveport, La., bowl cited an Alabama fan base that is closer than USC’s as one reason the Crimson Tide is Independence-bound for the second year in a row. But there would have been no debate had the Gamecocks won one of their final five games.

Under NCAA rules, the Independence Bowl would have been required to take a 7-5 USC squad over 6-6 Alabama.

“We’re a little disappointed we didn’t get to a bowl game, but we understand we have no one to blame but ourselves,” USC coach Steve Spurrier said. “We had five games to win No. 7 and we didn’t get it done.”

The Gamecocks were trying to reach a bowl game in three consecutive seasons for the first time in school history. Instead, USC finished with a collapse reminiscent of those in 2002 and ’03, when the Lou Holtz-coached Gamecocks missed bowls after losing their final five and four games, respectively.

Spurrier, who ramped up preseason goals to include an SEC East crown, failed to earn a bowl bid when his team was eligible for the first time since 1988, his second year at Duke.

“We’ve learned some humility around here. I’ve learned some. I think our whole team has learned some after we won our last three last year, and we lost our last five this year,” Spurrier said. “We were only one or two plays in the last game (a 23-21 loss to Clemson) … from being 7-5, the exact same record we had last year. But we didn’t do it.”

Spurrier made staff changes after each of his first two seasons at USC, but was non-committal when asked whether he would do so again. He thinks defensive coordinator Tyrone Nix has “a good shot” at the head-coaching post at Southern Miss, where Nix played and later coached. Nix interviewed with his alma mater on Friday.

Otherwise, Spurrier tried to throw a positive spin on a season that started with promise before riding off the rails. He is confident injured middle linebacker Jasper Brinkley and record-setting receiver Kenny McKinley will return to school rather than jump to the NFL.

He does not want USC followers to jump off the bandwagon, either.

“I just want to encourage our fans to hang in there with us. It didn’t work out this year. There were some reasons,” said Spurrier, pointing to a rushing offense and run defense that ranked last in the SEC. “We hope to be a stronger team next year.”

TENNESSEE

For the second year in a row, Tennessee’s football team will spend the holidays in Florida.

A day after falling to LSU in the SEC championship game, Tennessee accepted a bid to the Outback Bowl on Sunday, marking the second consecutive year UT will spend New Year’s Day in Tampa.

The 16th-ranked Vols (9-4) will face No. 18 Wisconsin (9-3) at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

ESPN will televise the game, which kicks off at 11 a.m.

Tennessee lost to Penn State in last year’s Outback Bowl, which dropped the Vols’ record to 2-5 in its last seven bowl games.

UT coach Phillip Fulmer wants to see that result change on this return visit to Tampa.

“We’ll kind of put closure on this season and make it a kick off to next year,” Fulmer said Sunday. “We have a chance to win 10 ballgames and send the seniors out in fine fashion.”

Having the same team two years in a row hasn’t been an issue for the Outback Bowl’s selection committee, as evidenced by repeat trips for South Carolina (2001, 2002), Florida (2003, 2004) and Ohio State (2001, 2002).

It wasn’t an issue this year, either.

“There was no question we’d love to have a team like this back,” Outback Bowl president/CEO Jim McVay said. “Very successful team, fun to watch, huge fan following. That’s the reason why you bring these guys back.

“In some situations, you really don’t want to bring someone back. But Tennessee, it was just too clear that everyone was just enamored with the Volunteers. The experience we had last year was just so positive. These guys are exceptional.”

Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton said that UT’s strong finish was a major selling point.

Despite Saturday’s loss, the Vols have won eight of their last 10 games after starting the season 1-2.

“I think that says something,” Hamilton said. “I think our team deserved to play on New Year’s Day. I think the conference concurred with that and the bowl executive directors that I talked to felt that way as well.”

Per an agreement with the SEC, the Outback, Capital One and Cotton bowls must select the SEC championship game loser once every four years.

The Cotton Bowl, which selected Arkansas for this year’s game, must select the championship game loser in either 2009 or 2010.

UT will receive about $1.25 million for its Outback Bowl appearance, including its share of the SEC payout for the bowl and a mileage allowance.

“That’s the budget we’ll operate off of,” Hamilton said. “We’ll budget to break even on this bowl.”

UT’s share of the $3.1-million payout from the Outback Bowl will be $1.04 million, the same total it received last year.

Tennessee’s ticket allotment is 11,000. As of Thursday, UT had Internet pre-orders for about 4,000.

VANDERBILT

Even though the finish brought Bobby Johnson’s record at the Commodores’ helm to 20-50, Vanderbilt isn’t expected to be involved in the flurry of coaching changes that have taken place over the past few days.

“I think Bobby is not only a great coach but a great teacher and a great person,” said David Williams, vice chancellor for university affairs and the school’s de facto athletics director.

“I think he’s the right fit for Vanderbilt. We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and I think things will continue to improve.

“I know probably the expectations and the hype this year leads to ‘we could have …’ or ‘we should have …’, but I’m pleased with the progress of the program. If you didn’t win every game, you always wish you did. But I think there’s been vast improvement in the program from year to year.”

Opening the season with four straight home games — and winning three of those — stoked talk of this year’s Commodores ending the school’s bowl drought that extends back to 1982.

Stopping a two-game losing streak with a stunning 17-6 win at South Carolina in Week 8, made postseason play seem all but certain to many onlookers.

But with four chances, after a win over Miami (Ohio), to reach the six-win requirement for bowl eligibility, Vanderbilt came up empty. The final blow was Saturday’s 31-17 loss to visiting Wake Forest.

As would be expected with a team that hovered around .500, inconsistency was a key for the Commodores, who held foes to 282 total yards or less in four different games, but allowed a pair of 400-yard games and two others of more than 360.

Offensively, preseason third-team all-SEC quarterback Chris Nickson was completely healthy only through the first game of the season, though he continued to play hurt before eventually giving way to Mackenzi Adams. The productivity at that position slipped — Nickson was the team’s leading rusher in 2006 and accounted for nearly 2,800 yards — and the unit sputtered.

“There’s no easy answer,” Johnson said. “We’ll just keep recruiting better players and being more efficient, the things we’ve been trying to do since we’ve been here. There’s no magic wand you can wave over somebody or a team and all of a sudden they become super-winners. There’s no point you get to (that), once you do this, you’re going to do it again every week.

“I’ve said all along, when we get it going here as good as we can get it, it’s still going to be a struggle. We’re in the part of the SEC with Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Kentucky, and this year we played Auburn and Alabama. That’s a pretty tough schedule and that’s not going to go away. That challenge is going to be there every year — no matter how good we get.”