Following an emphatic road win at LSU, Dan Mullen’s Mississippi State Bulldogs have moved up in the bowl projection pecking order and into the national rankings. Capital One Bowl representatives attended Saturday night’s game at Tiger Stadium and had to be impressed by the team wearing maroon and white’s performance.

The SEC could add a 12th bowl eligible team (we’re projecting) if Arkansas beats Texas A&M on Saturday at AT&T Stadium. The Razorbacks would be projected in the Birmingham Bowl next week (as the SEC’s No. 9) with a win over the Aggies.

We’ll make more of an educated guess around late October, especially with teams like LSU and South Carolina who have some ground to make with matchups against more ranked teams pending. At this point a quarter of the way through the season, there’s still a lot of win-loss projecting and order of league finish going on.

RELATED: Week 5 AP Top 25

2014 SEC BOWL PROJECTIONS AFTER WEEK 4 (11 invites)

  • College Football Playoff Semifinal No. 1: No. 1 Florida State vs No. 4 Auburn; No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Oklahoma
  • CFB Playoff Selection Committee Matchups — Peach: Georgia vs Baylor; Cotton: Texas A&M vs Michigan State
  • Capital One: Mississippi State vs Wisconsin
  • Outback: South Carolina vs Iowa
  • Music City: Virginia Tech vs LSU
  • Belk: Duke vs Florida
  • TaxSlayer: Michigan vs Ole Miss
  • Independence: Tennessee vs Georgia Tech
  • Liberty: TCU vs Mizzou

 On the outside looking in: Kentucky, Arkansas, Vanderbilt