(Written by kencraw)

Here’s a quick rundown on what needs to happen for the Bears to end up in each bowl:

Holiday Bowl: Oregon State beats Oregon, Cal beats Washington and USC gets an at-large BCS berth, which likely requires them to win-out (Notre Dame and UCLA), although not an absolute requirement. In this case Cal is 3rd in the conference but gets the 2nd place bowl because of two BCS bowls for the Pac-10.

Sun Bowl: Two scenarios here. #1 Oregon State beats Oregon, Cal beats Washington and USC fails to get at-large BCS berth. That means USC is in Holiday and Cal goes to Sun bowl assuming they respect head-to-head over Oregon (and they’re likely to since Oregon was in the Sun last year). #2, USC still gets at-large BCS berth but Cal loses to Washington, causing them to fall below Oregon in the standings and so losing the Holiday bowl bid. That puts them in a tie for 4th with Arizona, assuming they beat ASU or a tie with ASU assuming they beat UCLA and Arizona. Cal would be alone in 4th if Arizona loses to ASU and ASU loses to UCLA the preceeding week. In the tied with either of the Arizona schools scenario, Cal could end up in any of the Sun, Vegas or Emerald depending on how the politics play out (and make sure to note that Arizona holds the head-to-head over Cal and is closer to the Sun Bowl than any Pac-10 team, so are likely to get the nod over Cal in that scenario. Similarly, although ASU doesn’t hold the head-to-head over Cal, they just won their last two games in this scenario and are much closer to the Sun than Cal is.). In the alone in 4th scenario, Cal’s guaranteed the Sun.

Las Vegas Bowl: Theoretically this would be an easy enough bowl to be in, but the word on the street is that the Emerald bowl is willing to do whatever it takes to get the Bears from the Vegas Bowl if that’s where they naturally fall. Forgetting for a moment those politics, the Bears end up in the Vegas if Oregon State loses to Oregon, Cal beats Washington and USC beats UCLA. Then USC goes to the Rose, OSU to the Holiday and Oregon to the Sun (another political scenario here: Sun trades down to get Cal because they don’t want Oregon two years in a row). In that scenario, Cal would “belong” in the Vegas (but probably end up in the Emerald). The Bears could also end up here if they lose to Washington but the Vegas picks Cal over either of Arizona or ASU that they’re potentially tied with.

Emerald Bowl: Pretty much if Cal beats Washington, they should in theory stay above the Emerald, all above politics aside. So what it takes to fall here, by the numbers anyway, if for Oregon to beat OSU, USC to beat UCLA, Arizona to beat ASU and Cal to lose to Washington. In that scenario it’s USC in the Rose, Oregon in the Holiday, OSU in the Sun, Arizona in the Vegas with the head-to-head over Cal and Cal in the Emerald. If you’re willing to include some politics, another way this happens is that Arizona State beats both UCLA and Arizona, becoming bowl eligible and 5-4 in the conference, tied with Cal after they lost to UW. Although Cal holds the head-to-head, Vegas is pretty close to Pheonix and they’d love to take ASU, particularly when the Emerald is begging for Cal anyway.

That’s about it for half-way reasonable scenarios. One other one that seems pretty improbably is the set of scenarios if UCLA upsets USC. That’s not a big change if Oregon State beat Oregon, but if Oregon State loses to Oregon we’ve now got a 3-way tie for first. To make life even more complicated, who wins the tie-breaker would now be determined by which of Cal (Oregon’s 2nd loss), Stanford (OSU’s 2nd loss) and UCLA (USC’s 2nd loss) are higher in the standings. Whoever lost to the highest team is out. Ironically, although it is pretty darned complicated when one gets into the details, no matter what Oregon State wins that tie-breaker. In any case, while it’s a fascinating scenario for the conference, for the Bears it doesn’t change much from any of the above scenarios where Oregon beat OSU with the possible exception of UCLA replacing ASU as the 6th bowl-eligible team that is also tied with Cal should they lose to Washington.

Phew!… Got it? Good.