Bowl projections have Arizona football headed to several destinations

It’s been a while since Arizona fans have had to think about playing in a bowl game, let alone where it would be. But with only one more win needed for the Wildcats to get to the required six, and four chances to get there, it wouldn’t hurt to see what the options are.

According to the various bowl projections out there, the UA could be going anywhere from Los Angeles to Louisiana. But they all agree the Wildcats will be bowling for the first time since 2017.

The Pac-12 has affiliations with six bowl games, not including the ones that are part of the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six contests. The Rose Bowl, which has traditionally included a Pac-12 teams, is one of the semifinal games this year and isn’t guaranteed to get a P12 school in the final year of the conference.

Arizona is unlikely to get into an NY6 bowl unless it were to win out and rise high enough in the CFP rankings—the first Top 25 comes out Tuesday evening—but every P12-connected bowl is up for grabs. The conference doesn’t use a tier system, like other leagues do, so the Wildcats could end up in any of the following bowls:

• LA Bowl (Dec. 16)
• Independence Bowl (Dec. 16, Shreveport, La.)
• Las Vegas Bowl (Dec. 23)
• Holiday Bowl (Dec. 27, San Diego)
• Alamo Bowl (Dec. 28, San Antonio)
• Sun Bowl (Dec. 29, El Paso)

The Big 12 is the other conference that fills the Independence and Alamo bowls, while the Big Ten has the Vegas Bowl, ACC has the Holiday and Sun (with Notre Dame as another possibility) and the Mountain West is the other LA Bowl participant.

Arizona could also land in a bowl game that either doesn’t have a conference affiliation for both spots or has one with a league that can’t fill all it’s spots. The most likely of those are the Gasparilla Bowl (Dec. 22) in Tampa or the Birmingham Bowl (Dec. 23).

Here are the latest projections:

* Athlon: LA Bowl vs. Air Force

* ESPN: LA Bowl vs. Wyoming OR Independence Bowl vs. TCU

* Action Network: Las Vegas Bowl vs. Iowa

* CBS: Alamo Bowl vs. Kansas

* 247 Sports: Sun Bowl vs. Syracuse

Arizona’s last bowl appearance was in 2017 in the now-defunct Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif., where it lost 38-35 to Purdue in the final game under Rich Rodriguez.

The UA, which is 9-11-1 all-time in bowl games, has played in the Sun Bowl three times, most recently in 1992, going 0-2-1. It is 1-0 in the Independence and Las Vegas bowls, 1-1 in the Holiday Bowl and 0-1 in the Alamo.