After winning what coach Dave Clawson called the team’s ‘Super Bowl’ on Friday, the Falcon football team will now anxiously wait in hopes of earning a bowl bid.

A 38-24 win against Toledo gave BG its seventh win of the season, making them an attractive at-large option for the few bowl games that need a team. Bowl pairings will be announced Sunday.

Each of the 34 bowl games have specific conference tie-ins, but if a conference can’t fill all its spots with bowl eligible teams (almost always a team that is 6-6 or better), committees from any unfilled bowl games can select a team from any conference as an at-large replacement.

Since the Mid-American Conference only has three tie-in games, the Falcons’ best chance for a bowl bid is likely as an at-large team because Central Michigan (10-2), Ohio (9-3) and Temple (9-3) probably will fill the automatic slots. However, there is nothing that says that those bowl committees have to take the best teams from the conference.

This season, the MAC also gets an automatic bid to the EagleBank Bowl in Washington D.C. because the Atlantic Coast Conference does not have enough bowl eligible teams. The game is contracted to select a MAC team if the ACC can’t supply a team or if Army (5-6) – which also earns an automatic bid to the game – doesn’t become bowl eligible.

Army (5-6) plays Navy (8-3) on Dec. 12 to finish their season.

However, Northern Illinois (7-5) is also a bowl eligible team from the MAC and could trump BG for that bowl bid if the top three teams do go to the three MAC-contracted bowls. But even if the Huskies do earn the bid, Clawson still thinks his team has a good chance of being named an at-large team.

‘I think it’s very likely. There’s going to be a couple bowls that need at-large teams,’ Clawson said. ‘There’s not a lot of 7-5 at-large teams, and I think we’ve set ourselves up at one of the top 7-5 at-large teams.’

Clawson emphasized the team’s 7-5 record because any bowl that needs an at-large team has to a select a team that is 7-5 or better before it can select a 6-6 team, even if that 6-6 team would draw more fans to the game.

Therefore, the Falcons are ahead of teams such as Notre Dame when it comes to the pecking order of at-large bids.

Even that standard might not be enough for BG though, because two bowl games that will need at-large teams are the GMAC and Little Caesars Pizza Bowls, but since those bowls have tie-ins to the MAC, the Falcons can not play in those games because bowl rules prohibit teams from the same conference from meeting in a bowl game.

But there are still a couple other options for the team.

Coming into the weekend, Oklahoma State looked as if it would be an at-large team for one of the BCS bowls, possibly preventing Boise State from earning a bid of their own.

But since OSU lost to Oklahoma this weekend, that isn’t as likely to happen, meaning Boise State is expected to take that spot, which will open up one of the Western Athletic Conference’s automatic bowl bids.

The same will happen to the Mountain West Conference if TCU earns a BCS bid, which is also very likely. The two games that should be opened to at-large teams if that happens are the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego and the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl in Boise.

‘Last year, there wasn’t a 7-5 team in the nation that didn’t get a bowl game,’ said senior quarterback Tyler Sheehan. ‘We’ve done everything down the stretch for us to potentially get a bowl game. We’ve done what we can control, and now it’s on whatever bowl that wants to take us. I’d be shocked if we didn’t go to a bowl at this point.’

Included in that stretch were three fourth-quarter comebacks, helped largely in part to one of the nation’s top receivers, Freddie Barnes.

With their high-powered offense and Barnes five catches away from setting the NCAA record for receptions in a season, the Falcons should be a strong option for any bowl committee.

‘We play an exciting brand of football,’ Clawson said. ‘Every game this year except one has been very competitive.”