Georgia Tech’s bowl picture shaping up

Georgia Tech fans should be staying closer to home for a bowl game this year after heading West five of the past seven years.

How close remains to be seen. With a 9-3 record, a No. 15 ranking in the BCS standings, an energized fan base and a potential coach of the year (Paul Johnson), the Jackets offer the sort of sizzle bowl organizers like.

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Paul Johnson and Josh Nesbitt will be staying closer to home for the holidays this season. That’s good new for Georgia Tech.

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The Chick-fil-A Bowl, Gator Bowl and Champs Sports Bowl have the first three choices of ACC teams after the Orange Bowl grabs the league champion.

One of those three almost certainly will select the Jackets. At least one bowl official believes it will be the Chick-fil-A, which picks first.

“Sometimes, the best pick is the local guy,” said Music City Bowl president Scott Ramsey, who may select home-team Vanderbilt for his game.

Here’s a look at the possibilities:

• Possible opponents: LSU, South Carolina

The mission of the Atlanta Sports Council for the Chick-fil-A Bowl is to arrange the best game possible, council president Gary Stokan said. That would seem to give a strong nod to Georgia Tech, which has the highest BCS ranking of any ACC team and is surging. But the rub is that having Tech or Georgia in the game means a loss of about $5 million to $7 million in economic impact, according to Stokan, who added that the losses wouldn’t be “all that drastic.”

Florida State and the loser of the ACC championship game between Virginia Tech and Boston College would be the other options.

For Tech, the game might not feel as much like a bowl game because it would be played a couple of miles from campus, but it would give the Jackets a chance to complete a 3-0 sweep of the SEC.

• Possible opponents: Nebraska, Missouri

It wouldn’t be the New Year’s Day game in Florida that Tech wanted — that would be the Orange Bowl — but it would be a nice alternative. For what it’s worth, the Chick-fil-A might provide better national exposure, because it generally has outperformed the Gator Bowl and its 1 p.m. start in the TV ratings.

A Tech-Nebraska game would be a rematch, 18 years later, of the Jackets’ Florida Citrus Bowl victory that gave them a share of the 1990 national championship.

A Florida Times-Union story reported that Gator Bowl officials hope that the Chick-fil-A passes on Florida State so it could match the Seminoles and Nebraska, a rivalry from the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Should the Chick-fil-A pass on Tech, it would put the Gator in a tempting position to do likewise.

• Possible opponents: Minnesota, Wisconsin

It would be a minor surprise if Tech fell to the ACC’s No. 3 bowl, given its record, ranking and strong finish.

“All those things put them in a position for Atlanta to look at, and if not Atlanta, certainly Jacksonville,” said Steve Hogan, executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, which oversees the Champs Sports game.

It would be a disappointment for Tech to fall to this game, but it could be worse. Last year the Jackets played in Boise, Idaho.

Tech played in the Champs Sports game four years ago and defeated Syracuse 51-14. Since then, the bowl has moved to a post-Christmas date and increased its profile with a bigger payout.

The last time Tech played a Big Ten team was 1985, when it defeated Michigan State in the defunct All-American Bowl.