The Southeastern Conference has shaken up its bowl tie-ins.
The SEC announced six-year agreements with 10 bowl games on Tuesday, which includes the addition of new bowl games — the Las Vegas Bowl and the Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa.
The 10 bowl games due not include the bowl games that are part of the College Football Playoff system for which SEC teams are eligible to qualify. Also, the SEC participates in the Allstate Sugar Bowl in years it is not a CFP semifinal game and the Capital One Orange Bowl in selected years.
The SEC has extended its current agreements through 2025 with seven bowl games: The Citrus Bowl in Orlando, the Outback Bowl in Tampa, the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl in Nashville, the Academy Sports + Outdoors Texas Bowl in Houston, the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis and the Birmingham Bowl.
In addition, the SEC announced that it will continue its relationship with the Belk Bowl in Charlotte, participating in that bowl game in 2021, 2023 and 2025.
For the remaining three years of the six-year cycle, SEC teams will participate in the Las Vegas Bowl against a Pac-12 opponent in 2020, 2022 and 2024.
The SEC has also added a new bowl partnership with the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa through 2025.
“We are pleased to have an SEC bowl lineup that provides exciting destinations for our student-athletes and traveling fans,” said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. “We enjoy great relationships with some of the best bowl games in college football and this lineup will continue to provide a wide array of rewarding bowl game experiences for our student-athletes and fans in celebration of a successful season.”
The SEC will also maintain its current bowl selection process in which the Citrus Bowl has the first selection of available SEC teams after any conference schools have qualified for the College Football Playoff, the Allstate Sugar Bowl or the Capital One Orange Bowl, after which the SEC assigns teams to a Pool of Six bowls.
The bowl shake-up means that the SEC will no longer be affiliated with the Walk On’s Independence Bowl in Shreveport. Stadium’s Brett McMurphy reported on Tuesday that the bowl game in northwest Louisiana will gain a tie-in with the Pac-12.
The conference with the most appearances in the I-Bowl is the SEC with 18.