Inside The Huskies

In Bowl Projection, Huskies Might Have to Face the Music

This postseason pairing would have the UW and Oklahoma as opponents.

Dan Raley

The Sugar Bowl scoreboard counts down to the end of the game.
The Sugar Bowl scoreboard counts down to the end of the game. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Alaska Airlines has a direct flight from Seattle to Nashville, one that leaves daily at 10:20 a.m. and takes four and a half hours to get there. Book it now, and it's $700.

We bring this up because 247Sports has predicted the first postseason game for the University of Washington football program in the Jedd Fisch era will be the Music City Bowl against the Oklahoma Sooners in that aforementioned Tennessee metropolis on Monday, Dec. 30, with an 11:30 a.m. PT kickoff.

This would be a post-Christmas match-up for teams newly affiliated with the Big Ten and the SEC, respectively, and a rematch for Fisch who, in fact, 12 months ago took his Arizona team to the Alamo Bowl and beat Oklahoma 38-24 in San Antonio.

Now some people might argue that the Huskies, should they not return to the College Football Playoff this season, won't get anywhere near this Tennessee bowl game because the suggestion has been made that former Pac-12 teams have been urged to honor their late conference's postseason alliances for another two years.

However, there appears to be some pushback in insisting that Washington and the others from the broken-up Pac-12 who are joining the Big Ten, Big 12 or ACC must end up in bowl games such as the Alamo, Holiday, Sun and Vegas games.

In some instances, you might have new Big Ten teams playing old ones in the postseason, with similar arrangements happening among Big 12 and ACC teams, something the bowl games want to avoid.

For that matter, the Huskies have never played a football game in the state of Tennessee, having not faced Tennessee, Vanderbilt or Memphis in their long history.

However, that will change eventually, barring any scheduling changes. In 2022, the UW and Tennesee agreed to a home-and-home series that will have the Huskies visiting Neyland Stadium in Knoxville on Sept. 1, 2029, and hosting the Volunteers on Sept. 7, 2030, in Montlake.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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