The Mustangs’ loss to Houston last Saturday was a major set back in SMU’s search for its first bowl appearance in 20 years.

Conference-USA has five bowls this season. Four teams are already bowl- eligible.

Teams with more than six wins must be chosen before a team with six wins can be selected for a bowl.

There is a good chance that C-USA will have more bowl-eligible teams than bowls to play in.Eight winsHouston won its eighth game of the season last week. Along with that win the Cougars clinched the West Division of C-USA and a win next week against Memphis could earn home field advantage for the C-USA Championship game.Seven winsTulsa has seven wins with two games left. One is against SMU.Six winsEast Carolina and Southern Mississippi currently have six wins. ECU has to play Rice and North Carolina State, Southern Miss plays UAB and Marshall.Five winsSMU, Rice and UTEP all currently sit one win away from bowl eligibility.

UTEP has the easiest two games with Marshall and Memphis, both sitting at the bottom of the C-USA standings.

Rice has to play ECU and SMU.

SMU has the toughest schedule playing Tulsa and Rice.What this meansThis means that Houston and Tulsa have already secured bowl games. UTEP and Southern Miss shouldn’t have any problems making it to seven wins.

That leaves ECU, Rice and SMU sitting on the seven win bubble.

If ECU beats Rice next week that will give the Pirates seven wins and make it impossible for Rice to get to seven.

That would mean, however, that ECU would reach seven wins, and almost certain bowl placement.

That would mean that there would be five teams with seven wins, assuming that UTEP would beat Memphis in two weeks.

With five seven-win teams the Mustangs would have to win their last two games to even have a chance at going to a bowl.The bowlsC-USA’s five bowls are the Liberty Bowl, the GMAC Bowl, the Fort Worth Bowl, the Birmingham Bowl and the New Orleans Bowl.

The Autozone Liberty Bowl gets to make the first selection and will take the winner of the C-USA Championship game.

The GMAC Bowl has second selection and chose West Division runner-up UTEP last season.

The Fort Worth Bowl brings the possibility of matching TCU against SMU. This season was the first time since 1925 that the Mustangs have not played the Horned Frogs, not including the years SMU did not field a team in 1987 and 1988.

In order for that to even present itself as a possibility, the Mustangs must be in a position to go to a bowl game.

The best chance SMU has to go to a bowl and be appealing to a bowl selection commitee would be to defeat Tulsa at home and Rice on the road.