With the Cotton Bowl now being played at Jerry Jones' death star, the NCAA decided to give the actual Cotton Bowl venue a new bowl. This year, the TicketCity Bowl will be played at the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day and will be the first bowl game of 2011 to kick off.
↵The TicketCity Bowl will feature the No. 6 team from the Big 10 and a team from either the Big 12 of Conference USA. Currently, there are eight bowl eligible teams from the Big 10, with Michigan State, Ohio State and Wisconsin all in the BCS picture. Michigan State may very well end up winning the Big 10 outright, earning a bid to the Rose Bowl. Wisconsin, who is ranked fifth in the polls and seventh in the BCS, could end up with an at-large bid. Consequently, it's feasible that two teams from the Big 10 end up playing in BCS bowl games.
↵With that said, it looks like we'd be on pace to see Northwestern to face off against Texas Tech, who are in line to be about sixth after the Big 12 winner graduates to their BCS bowl.
↵This is, of course, subject to change with the coming weeks and a lot hinges on the Big 10's ability to field either one or two BCS bowl teams, but as of today, to me, the TicketCity Bowl would pit Northwestern vs. Texas Tech to kick us off into 2011 on New Year's Day.