Remember that ESPN can move teams around in the bowls they own (about half of them) to create more interesting matchups.

The CUSA champion used to go to the Liberty Bowl but one year Southern Miss won CUSA and went to the Hawaii Bowl instead. Then ESPN sent runner up Houston to play in some bowl against Penn State (ignoring tieins) and put Big East team Cincinnati in that Liberty Bowl slot to play Vanderbilt.

Supposedly they're going to find a good bowl to put Western Michigan in if they don't get the Cotton, which would mean remapping a lot of bowls outside of tie-ins. Possibly sending to Vegas to play Boise state, which would open up some different bowl to us.