The Liberty Bowl has emerged as the likely destination for the Kentucky football team this upcoming bowl season.

Bowl bids don’t officially go out until Sunday, but the Wildcats are down to two options: the Liberty and Music City Bowls. If two bowls make bids on the same team, the team gets to pick which bowl it will attend. Kentucky Coach Rich Brooks said on his radio show Monday night that he and the players would rather go to the Liberty Bowl than make a third consecutive trip to the Music City.

Brooks cited the desire to experience something different as the main reason to opt for Memphis over Nashville.

The Liberty Bowl will take place on Friday, January 2 at 5 p.m. EST and will be televised by ESPN. The Wildcats (6-6) would take on the winner of Saturday’s Conference USA Championship Game between Tulsa (10-2) and East Carolina (8-4).

For more on this story, please visit Kentucky.com or KentuckySports.com

Chick-Fil-A Bowl representative Kurt Patberg will visit Neyland Stadium on Saturday to scout the Tennessee-Kentucky game. The Wildcats (6-5, 2-5 SEC) would likely need a win and some outside help to merit serious consideration for the Chick-Fil-A, which will be held on New Year’s Eve in Atlanta and will feature an SEC team against an opponent from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Going into this weekend, the consensus was the University of Kentucky was down to three potential destinations for the bowl: The Liberty Bowl, Music City Bowl and Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

To get to the Chick-Fil-A in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome on Dec. 31, Kentucky (6-5, 2-5 SEC) needs to beat Tennessee next week and get some outside help. The Cats got some good news and bad news on that front Saturday. Vanderbilt and Ole Miss were viewed as two other primary contenders for the Chick-Fil-A.

Vandy, which beat UK last week to get bowl eligible, lost to Tennessee 20-10. The  Commodores (6-5) travel to Wake Forest next week.

Ole Miss, however, got a huge 31-13 road win at LSU. The Rebels now have seven wins and will be favored in next week’s Egg Bowl showdown with Mississippi State. Ole Miss may now be in play for a Cotton Bowl bid, with LSU perhaps sliding into the Chick-Fil-A discussion.

The Chick-Fil-A Bowl will be in Commonwealth Stadium for the second straight week scouting the University of Kentucky. UK (6-4, 2-4 SEC) is already bowl eligible. Its opponent, Vanderbilt, needs one more win to become bowl eligible. The Chick-Fil-A Bowl pits an SEC team against a team for the Atlantic Coast Conference. The game kicks off a 7:30 on New Year’s Eve in the Georgia Dome and is televised by ESPN.

The Chick-Fil-A would seem to be a logical destination for the Wildcats if they could get at least one more win. The Wildcats haven’t appeared in the bowl game since 1993, when it was known as the Peach Bowl. Also, UK fans historically have traveled extremely well to Atlanta for the SEC Tournament.

Chick-fil-A Bowl representative Larry Terry will visit Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Ky. on Saturday to scout the match-up between Kentucky and No. 13 Georgia. The two teams are being scouted as potential representatives in the 2008 Chick-fil-A Bowl on Dec. 31. The game will kickoff at 7:30 p.m. in the Georgia Dome and will be broadcast by ESPN. The ACC and SEC team selections for the 41^st edition of the bowl are scheduled to be announced Dec. 7.

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It looks like Sunday’s 27-2 win over Louisville has changed some perceptions about Kentucky’s fortunes for the 2008 season. After not being placed in Collegefootballnews.com’s initial bowl projections, the Wildcats were picked for the Liberty Bowl in the latest projections released on Monday. CFN has the Wildcats playing projected Conference USA champ Tulsa