By The Associated Press
By The Associated Press
The Latest on the College Football Playoff and bowl selection Sunday (all times Eastern):
5:30 p.m.
Florida State was considered a contender for a College Football Playoff spot during the preseason. Instead, it will be in one of the lower-tier bowls.
The Seminoles will face Southern Mississippi in the Dec. 27 Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana. It is their first appearance in the game.
Florida State (6-6), which lost starting quarterback Deondre Francois in the opener against Alabama, needed to win its last three games in order to extend its bowl game appearance streak to 36.
Odell Haggins will serve as the Seminoles interim coach after Jimbo Fisher resigned last Friday to accept the job at Texas A&M.
The Seminoles and Golden Eagles haven’t played since 1996 when Florida State won 54-14.
It will mark the second time in a week that the schools will meet in a sporting event. The men’s basketball teams have a game in Tallahassee, Florida, on Dec. 21.
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4:50 p.m.
The longest bowl drought in the nation will end when New Mexico State plays Utah State in the Arizona Bowl in Tucson on Dec. 29.
New Mexico State hasn’t appeared in a postseason game since beating Utah State in the 1960 Sun Bowl.
NMSU (6-6) became eligible with its 22-17 win over South Alabama on Saturday — a day athletic director Mario Moccia called a «tremendous day for long-suffering Aggies fans.»
NMSU also was eligible for a bowl in 2002, when it went 7-5, but it did not receive an invitation.
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4:15 p.m.
Memphis will be playing a bowl game at its home stadium.
The 19th-ranked Tigers (No. 20 College Football Playoff) will face Iowa State in the Dec. 30 Liberty Bowl at Memphis, Tennessee. This marks the first time in the Liberty Bowl’s 59-year history that the hometown team will play in the game.
Memphis (10-2) had a shot at a New Year’s Six bowl before losing the American Athletic Conference championship game to Central Florida in double overtime.
The Liberty Bowl normally pits a Southeastern Conference team against a Big 12 school. With two SEC teams (Alabama and Georgia) making the playoff and a third (Auburn) in the Peach Bowl, the league didn’t have enough remaining bowl-eligible teams to fill all its remaining tie-ins.
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4 p.m.
Ohio State coach Urban Meyer says he «sank in my chair at home because I really thought we were in» after learning the Buckeyes had not made the College Football Playoff.
He says the team is going to instead look ahead to a Cotton Bowl matchup against Southern California.
The playoff selection committee picked Alabama over Ohio State for the playoff. Both the Pac-12 and Big Ten have no teams among the four semifinalists.
Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said only that he recognized the difficult decision facing the committee.
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3:30 p.m.
No. 9 Penn State will face No. 12 Washington in the Fiesta Bowl.
The Nittany Lions and Huskies both finished 10-2 and will meet at University of Phoenix Stadium on Dec. 30. Penn State was No. 9 in the final College Football Playoff rankings and Washington was No. 11.
Penn State and Washington were both playoff contenders before midseason losses knocked them out of the race.
The Nittany Lions reached No. 2 in the AP Top 25, but lost to Ohio State 39-38 on Oct. 28 and to Michigan State the following week.
Washington was No. 5 in the AP poll when it surprisingly lost 13-7 to Arizona State on Oct. 14. The Huskies also lost to Stanford before closing out the season with two victories.
Penn State has never lost in six previous trips to the Fiesta Bowl, though its last appearance was in 1997. Washington is making its Fiesta Bowl debut.
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3:22 p.m.
Ohio State is returning to the stadium where the Buckeyes won the first College Football Playoff championship under the current system.
The Big Ten-champion Buckeyes will play in the Cotton Bowl on Dec. 29 against Pac-12 champion Southern California. That is a matchup of 11-2 teams that have played each other in the Rose Bowl seven times.
In 2014, the first season of the four-team CFP, Ohio State made it to the national championship game and beat Oregon 42-20 at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys that has hosted the Cotton Bowl since the 2009 season.
Ohio State and USC have both played in the Cotton Bowl only once before, both when the game was played in historic Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas.
USC beat Texas Tech 55-14 at the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day 1995. Ohio State won 28-12 over Texas A&M on New Year’s Day 1987.
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3:20 p.m.
Call this the Distraction Bowl.
The Peach Bowl includes Central Florida coach Scott Frost, who’s leaving for Nebraska, and Auburn’s Gus Malzahn, who’s facing questions about whether he will remain with the Tigers.
The undefeated, 10th-ranked Knights (12-0, No. 12 CFP) will play the Southeastern Conference title game runner up in No. 7 Auburn (10-3, No. 7 CFP) on Jan. 1.
Frost was hired as Nebraska’s coach shortly after UCF won a 62-55, double overtime shootout with Memphis to capture the American Athletic Conference title. Frost has said he will coach his team in the bowl game.
Malzahn’s team fell to playoff-bound Georgia in the SEC title game Saturday amid questions that he’s the target for Arkansas’ open job.
It should lead to plenty of questions for both teams not related to the upcoming bowl game.
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3:09 p.m.
Miami is staying home for bowl season, and will meet Wisconsin in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30.
The Hurricanes (10-2) are going to the Orange Bowl for the 10th time, and it’s played in Hard Rock Stadium — Miami’s home field. Miami is on a two-game losing streak, but gets the berth after being the highest-ranked Atlantic Coast Conference team that is not part of the College Football Playoff.
Wisconsin (12-1) is coming off its first loss of the season, falling 27-21 to Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. That loss probably kept the Badgers out of the CFP field.
The Hurricanes and Badgers haven’t played in eight years, and that was at the Champs Sports Bowl. Both have strong defenses, with Wisconsin’s ranking No. 1 nationally in yards allowed in No. 2 in points allowed.
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3:05 p.m.
Ohio State coach Urban Meyer concedes the one-sided nature of the Buckeyes’ 55-24 loss at Iowa outweighed his team’s quality wins in the eyes of the College Football Playoff selection committee.
Alabama beat Ohio State for the final spot in the playoff. Says Meyer: «The bottom line is we had a tough road loss against, in my opinion, a very good team — but a tough road loss.»
Ohio State won the Big Ten and had three victories over teams (Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan State) ranked higher in the playoff standings than No. 17 LSU, the top team to lose to Alabama.
Meyer says each season is now like March Madness from day one.
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2:40 p.m.
The Big 12 will have quite a bowl bonanza, led by Oklahoma going to the Rose Bowl as part of the College Football Playoff.
The smallest of the 10 Division I conferences will have the highest percentage of bowl teams.
Eight of the Big 12’s 10 teams — or 80 percent — will be going to a bowl game. Only Kansas and Baylor, both 1-11, failed to qualify.
The league that can get the closest to that is the Pac-12, with nine of its 12 teams — or 75 percent — reaching the six wins needed for bowl eligibility.
While the ACC and Conference USA could have as many as 10 of the 14 teams from each of those leagues in bowls, that is only 71 percent.
There were only six Big 12 teams that went to bowls last year, but this will be the third time in the seven seasons since going to a 10-team league that at least eight will play in postseason games. In 2012, a record nine Big 12 teams made it.
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2:10 p.m.
The playoff selection committee has released its entire top 25, with the rest of the major bowl pairings still to come.
The highest ranked Pac-12 team was Southern California at eight. It’s the first time a Power Five conference did not have a team in the top seven.
