Missouri Football Week 11 Bowl Projections: Bowl Chances Dwindle After Loss to Kentucky

The Missouri Tigers had an opportunity last week for a program-altering win to move them into third place in the SEC East standings. Instead, Mizzou fell 21-17 at home to Kentucky in another frustrating loss as the Tigers have lost seven out of their last eight meetings against the Wildcats.

Perhaps more importantly, Missouri dropped to 4-5 (2-4 SEC) on the season — making bowl eligibility obviously tougher to clinch.

However, with the most likely scenario happening over the next couple of weeks (lose to Tennessee and beat New Mexico State), Missouri will still have bowl eligibility to play for in their regular season finale at home against Arkansas.

After the Razorbacks’ latest loss to Liberty and with LSU, Ole Miss looming — the Battle Line Rivalry on Black Friday may very well be 5-6 vs 5-6 in order to get to a bowl game. Arkansas will be favored against Missouri, and rightfully so but it’s certainly a game that Mizzou CAN win.

Now, there’s a possibility where Mizzou may still get a bowl invite with a 5-7 record due to not enough 6-6 teams, but nobody really wants to see that happen — even though the extra practices and bowl money would be beneficial.

Despite the under .500 record right now, Missouri still surprisingly appears in a lot of this week’s bowl projections. Here’s the latest rundown for the Tigers:

CBS’ Jerry Palm: (Liberty Bowl vs kansas — December 28th)

ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura: (Music City Bowl vs Minnesota — December 31st)

Action Network’s Brett McMurphy: (Liberty Bowl vs Oklahoma State — Dec. 28) *Projects Mizzou at 5-7.

Sporting News’ Bill Bender: (Las Vegas Bowl vs Washington State — Dec. 17)

Athlon Sports: (Liberty Bowl vs Oklahoma State — Dec. 28)

College Football News: (Music City Bowl vs Wisconsin — Dec. 31)

Pro Football Network: (Texas Bowl vs kansas — Dec. 28)

Saturday Down South: (Birmingham Bowl vs Coastal Carolina — Dec. 27)

Yahoo!: (Birmingham Bowl vs Louisiana — Dec. 27)

Missouri missed the cut on USA Today and Sports Illustrated.

Last season, Missouri made the Armed Forces Bowl — but that was in a year of 13 bowl eligible SEC teams and the Tigers were so far down in the bowl pecking order they found themselves outside the league’s pool of six.

It’s very likely that there will NOT be 13 bowl eligible SEC teams this season, so there’s a scenario where Missouri could land in the mid-tier SEC’s Pool of Six bowls — even at 6-6.

That’s IF the Tigers can get there.