Is Auburn bowl eligible? Exploring Tigers' chances of securing a CFB Bowl game

The Auburn Tigers are currently in their first season under head coach Hugh Freeze. He took over from Bryan Harsin, who spent two seasons as the head coach of the program. Last year, the Tigers had a disappointing 3-5 campaign, which led to them to hiring Freeze

This campaign, the Auburn Tigers are having a better season compared to last year. Their performance has improved on the field, and are currently on a 5-4 record so far. But are they eligible to play in a post-season bowl game yet?

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Is Auburn bowl eligible?

According to NCAA rules, an FBS team needs to win at least six games to qualify as a potential participant for bowl games. The Auburn Tigers so far have won five, with their fifth win of the season coming last weekend against the Vanderbilt Commodores. Thus, the program is just one win shy from being bowl-eligible in Hugh Freeze's debut campaign.

Auburn Vanderbilt Football

The program's hope of being eligible for the postseason bowl looked to be in a state of turmoil when they were going on a four-game losing streak. After back-to-back defeats at the hands of Texas A&, Georgia, LSU and Ole Miss, the Tigers recuperated with wins over Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

Now the Tigers have three more games remaining in the regular season. These are against Arkansas, New Mexico State and Alabama. If the team can go on to secure another win, then they qualify to be in contention for a bowl game.

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Hugh Freeze opens up about the road map ahead for the Tigers

In the post-game press conference following the win over Vanderbilt, Coach Freeze talked about how he believes in attaining checkpoints rather than having one big goal in the end. He talked about how he replaced the themes of the first half of the season with the next checkpoint, which is to be eligible for a bowl game.

"I'm not big on goals. I'm big on 'what are we doing today to get us closer to our competitiveness in this conference?' I erased all of our themes from the first half of the season and I put our last five games up and said the first logical step in our rebuild here is gaining bowl eligibility, which we've done every year I have taken over a program in the first year. Whether it was Arkansas State, Ole Miss or Liberty. I think that's really invaluable to be able to do that," Freeze said.

The Auburn Tigers next face the Arkansas Razorbacks. Can they record their sixth win and tick off the next checkpoint in Freeze's list?