Sporting News Projects West Virginia Will Land in Liberty Bowl

With West Virginia now officially halfway to bowl eligibility, picking up win No. 3 over TCU on Saturday, the bowl projections are back in the works for WVU.

Sporting New’s Bill Bender projected all 42 bowl games in a recent article, and he predicted that WVU will land, once again, in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl against Tennessee on Dec. 28 at 5:30 p.m at the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee.

Which would be a rematch of last season’s Liberty Bowl had Tennessee been able to play — the Volunteers missed the game because of COVID-19.

The latest college football bowl projections from @BillBender92 🏈

Full list: https://t.co/IMwGKWqbgM pic.twitter.com/GxYC0ICQML

— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) October 26, 2021

WVU will need to win three of its final five games this season to clinch bowl eligibility. No. 22 Iowa State and No. 15 Oklahoma State will travel to Morgantown over the next two weeks for tough conference matchups. Another home game against Texas is sandwiched in between trips to Kansas for away games against Kansas State and Kansas to end the season.

According to FPI, WVU is only projected to beat Kansas the rest of the way. Although, FPI favored TCU to beat WVU on Saturday too.

WVU has history with the Liberty Bowl, appearing in last season’s edition of the game. The Mountaineers have appeared in the bowl three times in the game’s history, losing twice before last season’s 24-21 win over Army.

In 1964, the bowl’s sixth ever edition, WVU lost to Utah 32-6 in front of just over 6,000 fans. In fact, the 2020 edition was the lowest attendance for a Liberty Bowl since that 1964 game. WVU’s other Liberty Bowl appearance came in 2014, a 45-37 loss to Texas A&M.