For the second time in three years under head coach Barry Odom, Missouri will close out its season with a bowl game appearance. On Sunday afternoon, the Tigers find out where theyre headed in postseason play, and a bowl announcement press conference with Odom and AD Jim Sterk at the Mizzou Athletics Training Complex is set for 6 p.m. The Missourian will have coverage as details emerge throughout the day.

Missouri enters bowl season following a 38-0 win over Arkansas on Nov. 23 to finish off the regular season, bringing Missouris record to 8-4 on the year. The win extended Missouris winning streak to four games, and thrust the Tigers to No. 24 in this weeks College Football Playoff rankings. Its the first time Missouri has appeared in a major top-25 poll all season, and marks the first time the Tigers have made an appearance in the CFP rankings since Dec. 7 2014.

That was 208 weeks ago.

Missouri has still not yet been featured in the Associated Press or Coaches Top 25 polls in 2018, but the jump into the CFP rankings has provided the Tigers with a boon entering the selection process. Yet while the breakthrough has added cache to Missouris bowl prospects, and optimism to the fanbase, its done very little toward determining where the Tigers will ultimately be playing their final game of the season. The bowl selection process, particularly in the Southeastern Conference, is a complex and highly political one that makes projecting bowl destinations next to impossible.

To understand just where Missouri might be headed come Sunday night, heres a comprehensive guide:

At the very top of the college football postseason hierarchy, of course, is the College Football Playoff. Early Sunday, the College Football Playoff selection committee will release its final rankings with the top-four teams going on to compete in the national semifinals in the Orange Bowl or Cotton Bowl on Dec. 29. As if it hadnt already, Alabama secured its spot in the College Football Playoff on Saturday afternoon with its tight 35-28 win over Georgia in the SEC Championship in Atlanta. That is now all but settled.

Next up is the Sugar Bowl, which has held an official tie-in with the SEC since 1976, and is entitled to the next-highest ranked team in the conference. Thatll likely be Georgia this time around, and theyll move on to face a Big 12 Conference team on New Years Day in New Orleans.

From there, the committee will extend at-large bids to fill out the remainder of the New Years Six bowl games. The Peach and Fiesta Bowls are each expected to feature an SEC team, with Florida and LSU ranked No. 3 and No. 4 respectively in the conference the most likely to be selected to round out the upper crust.

Once the top tier is accounted for, the Citrus Bowl, where Missouri earned its last bowl victory in 2015 in a 33-17 win over Minnesota, is given top priority in making a selection from the SEC. Kentucky, ranked No. 15 in the committees most recent rankings, appears a likely candidate to be chosen for the game typically played against a Big Ten Conference opponent in Orlando, Florida.

With all that sorted out, this is where Missouri and its bowl game possibilities come into play. The SEC has tie-in agreements with the Outback Bowl, Texas Bowl, Belk Bowl, Music City Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Gator Bowl, all of which comprise what is known as the Pool of Six that the conference sends its bowl-eligible teams to every year. Unlike other conferences, which order their bowl tie-ins from top to bottom and insert teams from there, the SEC has no pecking order. Instead, the conference makes their selections behind closed doors. While there is no official hierarchy within the Pool of Six, the Outback Bowl is viewed as the plum within the lower tier of the SECs bowl games. Played on New Years Day in Tampa Bays Raymond James Stadium, the bowl game offers national exposure, but with No. 18 Mississippi State and No. 19 Texas A&M sitting ahead of the Tigers, its not a game Missouri should expect to appear in this season.

After playing in Houstons Texas Bowl last December, where Missouri fell to the Texas Longhorns 33-16, its fairly unlikely the Tigers will be invited back for a second consecutive year; the deep contingent of intriguing, bowl-eligible teams from the SEC all but guarantees that. And while the Gator Bowl, played on Dec. 31 in Jacksonville, Florida, would appear to be a solid bowl game within Missouris reach, Josh Kendall of The State in Columbia, South Carolina, reported earlier this week that Gator Bowl representatives had narrowed their focus on Texas A&M and South Carolina.

The Belk Bowl would also make sense for the Tigers in terms of significance, but lack of regional proximity to its Charlotte, North Carolina, site makes it an unlikely location.

All signs now point to Missouris appearing in either the Music City Bowl or the Liberty Bowl.The Tigers have yet to appear in the 21-year-old Music City Bowl, which includes a tie-in with the Big Ten in addition to its agreement with the SEC. Multiple bowl projections have linked the Tigers to the bowl game in Nashville. On the other hand, Missouri has a history in Memphis, Tennessees Liberty Bowl. The Tigers have appeared twice in the bowls 59-year history.

Regardless of the location, 2018 will mark bowl appearance No. 33 for the Tigers in program history. Missouri is 15-17 in bowl games all-time.

Supervising editor is Seth Bodine.