The first bowl game is 103 days away, but why not get a head start? Besides, is it ever too early to start projecting bowl games? We think not.

With this being our first set of SEC bowl projections of the season, we wanted to explain where teams are slotted and why we picked certain teams to play in certain games. There’s a science to this, believe it or not, and it’s different for every conference.

The initial projections have three SEC teams playing in the New Year’s Six bowls with Alabama the early favorite to reach the College Football Playoff. After those games are filled, next up comes the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl, which will be selected based on league standings.

Then it gets tricky. There’s no real pecking order between the AutoZone Liberty Bowl and the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl. They are listed below by date, but teams are generally selected on proximity to the bowl site and whether or not a certain team played there the year before. So if a team is in one of these bowl games, that means they could finish anywhere from fifth to 10th in the conference.

Finally, the last two teams (assuming there are enough bowl-eligible teams in the SEC) will slide into the Birmingham Bowl and the Camping World Independence Bowl, respectively.

Without further ado, here are our initial SEC bowl projections:

College Football Playoff semifinal (Cotton Bowl): Alabama

Allstate Sugar Bowl: Georgia

Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl: Auburn

Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl: Texas A&M

AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Ole Miss

TaxSlayer Bowl: Arkansas

Outback Bowl: LSU

Franklin American Mortgage Music Bowl: Missouri

Belk Bowl: Tennessee

AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl: Mississippi State

Birmingham Bowl: South Carolina

Camping World Independence Bowl: Florida