Some called it quite possibly the game the most important game in recent program history. The chance to beat Tennessee, grab second place in the Southeastern Conference East Division and go to an upper echelon bowl game made Saturday’s game the most important of the season.Now it’s time to deal with the fallout of a loss. The reality of the situation is the Cats have fallen from second to tied for fourth in the SEC East, and their once promising bowl situation seems a little less glamorous.Yes, the Cats could still be selected to the Chick-fil-A Bowl on New Year’s Eve, but now they’re one of a handful of teams vying for that primetime game in Atlanta. With the loss, the Cats join a logjam of seven-win teams in the SEC.The SEC East alone has four seven-win teams in UK, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. Conventional wisdom might suggest that Tennessee and South Carolina would trump UK because of head-to-head wins and UK would sit above Georgia because of the victory last week in Athens, Ga.However, it doesn’t quite work that way. The bowl selections are predicated more on the final standings and who those particular bowls want. There’s a bowl pecking order of who selects first, second, third and so forth. The Chick-fil-A Bowl will have a wide selection of teams to choose from because of the logjam, so chances are how well a team travels will play a large part in the decision. Does Big Blue Nation travel well? Sure, especially to Catlanta, but so do teams like Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. In other words, it’s a crapshoot. If the Cats don’t end up in Atlanta, they could go anywhere from a return to trip to the Music City Bowl to the Papajohns.com Bowl or the Independence Bowl. I can already see the reaction on some of your faces. The Papajohns.com Bowl? The Independence Bowl? How did they slide from the potential Outback Bowl to those bowls? Well, Chris Low of ESPN.com has predicted that UK will wind up in the Papajohns.com Bowl, which happens to take place the same day as the UK-Louisville basketball game. (CBSSports.com has UK in the Music City Bowl.)And while the Independence Bowl seems like a long shot still, the Independence Bowl representatives were very interested in the Cats Saturday night. As Rich Brooks walked out of the media room after the UT game, the two Independence bowl reps stopped Brooks to chat with him for a few minutes. As they departed, one of the reps grabbed Brooks’ hand and said, “We will definitely be in contact this week.”Think they want the Cats in Shreveport, La.? You can bet your last dollar they’re going to do everything in their will to get UK.We’ll have to see this week how it all shakes out. What could have been a pretty clear bowl picture with a win has suddenly turned into a muddled mystery.

“This could have been better,” Brooks said Saturday night. “It also could have been worse. … It’s not the season that I wanted or expected. I exepcted more and I think our players expected more, but the fact that we’re in postseason … we’ll find out what’s going on, where we end up, who we play and see if we can get that eighth win.”