The Auburn Tigers have had quite the rollercoaster of a season so far, but one goal stands at the end of the season, and it’s one that the Tigers have struggled to achieve over the past few seasons: bowl eligibility. After taking down Georgia just two Saturdays ago, the Tigers improved to four wins on the season, so they’ll need just two more wins to see a bowl for the first time since 2023.
This is certainly a great step for the Tigers, whom many feared would miss out on a bowl due to the brutality of their SEC slate, but the win against Georgia seems to have been paramount in the Tigers’ odds of finding a bowl.
In fact, two of ESPN’s analysts, Kyle Bonagura and Mark Shlabach, have been predicting the Tigers to make a bowl game all season, and after the Tigers’ blowout loss to LSU last Saturday, things have changed a bit for their projected finish.
For starters, Bonagura believes the Tigers will match up with none other than the USF Bulls, where Alex Golesh, Joel Gordon, Kodi Burns and a host of others were coaching a year ago, and where players like Byrum Brown, Chas Nimrod, Keshaun Singleton and Cole Best played at just this time last year.
Needless to say, this would be a highly emotional matchup for the two teams, who Bonagura projects to meet in the Gasperilla Bowl. Notably, Bonagura has held this prediction since the Tigers’ loss to Tennessee, though it’s interesting that the projection hasn’t changed given the chaos of the last two weeks for the Tigers.
Shlabach, on the other hand, predicts a less emotional but still highly interesting matchup between the Tigers and the Illinois Fighting Illini, which would take place in the Birmingham Bowl. In essence, that game would be quite like a home game for the Tigers, whose campus is just a few hours from Birmingham.
Both of these projections would, admittedly, be a fantastic way to end the season for the Tigers; either they take on a former Golesh squad to wrap up his first year on the Plains, or the fans get a near-home matchup for their first bowl game since 2023.
Of course, this is all reliant on the Tigers earning bowl eligibility, which would require two more wins. The Tigers still have scheduled matchups with Ole Miss, Arkansas, Mississippi State, Samford and Alabama, though they are only early favorites against Arkansas and Samford, with a slight 5% edge against Mississippi State.
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