With the Orange Bowl likely to take Connecticut, the Fiesta Bowl seems more or less set as well.
That's because the last of the BCS bowl games to pick its lineup this year would have two automatically qualified teams set to clash in Glendale: Oklahoma and Stanford.
If the Orange Bowl does opt for Connecticut, the Fiesta Bowl will probably rejoice: Stanford is a far less damaging booby prize for it than Connecticut would have been, and not just because students and Bay Area fans might be able to make the trip from Palo Alto to Glendale.
An Oklahoma-Stanford Fiesta Bowl would instantly be no worse than the third-best BCS bowl game of this year, and it could be argued that it would be the second-best, edging the rock fight that a prospective Wisconsin-TCU Rose Bowl would undoubtedly produce. Both Oklahoma and Stanford can throw, thanks to Landry Jones and Andrew Luck, and each team has an underrated defense. This Fiesta Bowl could be both a shootout and an excellent game.
And if the Orange Bowl opts for Connecticut, the Glendale area gets that Fiesta Bowl and an Oregon-Auburn BCS National Championship Game in the span of a week. That's a great set of late holiday gifts.